About a week ago we made a decision to put the girls in toddler beds for the first time ever. We have been putting this off forever because we dreaded what would happen once they were no longer "caged". Well, the nightmare has been going on now for over a week and it doesn't look like it will be letting up anytime soon apart from major divine intervention (which we are continually praying for :) For the first two nights, this is what their toddler beds looked like:
DO NOT BE DECEIVED by these pictures. They portray two little girls contently and happily laying in their big-girl beds as if they are about to quietly go to sleep. These pictures were taking right before we turned off their lights and walked out of their room on the first night of the "transition"....
The events that followed cannot be captured on camera....it's just not possible :) At first they laid there for a few minutes and talked and laughed with each other...then it hit them...."WE CAN GET OUT OF BED!!!....YAY! IT'S PARTY TIME!!!"....the party (or war...which ever perspective you have) lasted for about 3 or so hours the first night and then several times throughout the night. Nice. Mama tired.... Daddy tired.... What have we done?!?!?
We thought it may help (we were willing to try anything!) to get some sort of rail for their beds to help them feel more secure and also provide at least somewhat of a barrier so they just weren't rolling out of bed and running around the room like crazy monkeys....
Here are their beds with the rails up....AGAIN...do not be deceived by the pictures of little angels you see here....
Jocie even pretending to be asleep....not a funny joke, Jocie :)
SO, on the first night of the rails, it only took about 20 minutes or so to keep them in their room/bed and then they fell asleep! We were so pumped....we thought we had found the answer to the nightmare. WRONG!! The following night was by far the worst up to that point. We put them to bed at 7pm and they didn't go to sleep until after 11pm. They were running around the room, jumping in and out of each other's beds, opening the door, doing flips on the floor....and every single time we would go in their to spank their booties and put them back in bed...they would LAUGH....like it was this hilarious game we 4 were playing. NOT FUNNY. NOT FUNNY AT ALL. Since that night we have been trying several different "approaches"...some we've read about or heard about or friends have suggested to us....none have seemed to work quite yet. There was one other night a few days ago that wasn't horrible and we got our hopes up again until the next night when the nightmare returned :( I'm not even going to go into nap times....you can imagine how those have been :) Needless to say, we are tired, frustrated, did I mention tired?!? This transition has been SO much harder than I had anticipated! Several friends have wrote on FB and encouraged me with their experiences, advice, and prayers. I very much appreciate that! Please continue to do so! I will keep you updated on what's happening in the war-zone :) Hopefully the nightmare will end soon....
2 comments:
LaJuan, I'm not a mom but I'll tell you what my mom did when I was kid. She bribed me. She knew I LOVED barbies, so she told me if I would stay in my OWN bed every night she would buy me my barbie dream house. It worked for me! You might have already tried the bribery approach. Just an idea. :)
Good luck!
So sorry this has been so hard! It will get better, I promise! The only other thing you can do, if you get beyond desperate.... is separation. I don't know how hard that would be with twins. But we've done it many times and it works so much better than having them together at that age. Even when we didn't have the "room" for that..... we've had several kids sleep in closets. Seriously. Whatever you do, I'll pray that you all get some sleep soon! Good luck!
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