1,016 days

Yep. It was a mere 1,016 days

or

(2 years, 9 months and 12 days)

or

(24, 384 hours)

or

(1, 463,040 minutes)

ago

that we were he was doing this:

Building 3 cribs while I cooked our 3 babies. I remember this day as well as I did 1,016 days ago. 

My babies lived in these cribs for 888 days. 

They played in these cribs, they slept soundly in these cribs, they cried in these cribs. 

Oh, and they scaled the rails of these cribs, which brings us to today. 

Today, they came down. (I know, I know, they sort of came down once before, but only for a day so it doesn't count.) This time, there's no going back. 

Today was spent undoing. And stifling some "where has the time gone" tears, (mine) and watching my big girl help her daddy carry away her crib-the crib we placed her in when she was a mere 3 lb. 8 oz.

"You see that face, Hunter?" (Referring to mine.) "Remember it. You're gonna see that face many more times in your life." 

So beginning at about 10:00 this morning, Brian began the undoing process. One at a time, he took a crib apart and I carried it down to the garage where I placed them into various give away piles. 

Much the way she does with any of his projects, Hunter stayed close by her daddy in case he needed help. Okay, mostly just to check in and offer a "Hi Daddy" every now and again, and a "What doin, Daddy?" here and there, but she does enjoy helping. 

And his patience has grown tremendously the past 2 and a half years and watching him teach her how to turn the alan wrench just about melts my heart. 

The best part is the good job kiss she gets for helping! 

Alas, the remnants.

And I'll be honest, I wasn't going to post these videos, because I haven't been able to for the past year and a half or so. But purely by accident, I uploaded them using this new Blogger interface and son of a gun, it worked! So enjoy our lame videos! (Now that I know it works, I'll be sure to turn the camera the proper way so you don't have to crank your necks.) 

You didn't think the boys were going to stay away the whole time, did ya? 

They're like zoo animals who just got set free! 

I didn't want to discuss the filth that coated the walls where grubby little feet have kicked the past 888 days, but well, here we are. 

Washing walls. "Coton's feet dirty, mama." Yes, they are little girl. 

At this point, Brian decided to grab a chair so he could see about fixing their fan. In all her mightiness, she grabbed on to that chair and said, "I hold it." Seriously? I love her. 

And just like that, the cribs were gone.

The beds were there. 

And 4 hours later, 3 cribs had been undone and 3 beds had been constructed.

Camp Bunchkin is ready for business. 

If you ask me, the best part of this whole process was watching the mattresses come to life. They come packed like this-all rolled up and vacuumed sealed. 

You simply remove the outer packaging,

Then make a slit so that it can be unrolled, 

Then slit the packaging again,

And watch it fill with air! 

See how much it's plumping up and it's been just a second or two. 

Ta da! And just like that, we have.....

Camp Bunchkin! 

Unfortunately, the space between each bed is even less than I thought it would be...

So our big headed boys cannot even walk between the two beds without their heads getting stuck! (Go ahead. Just try not to laugh!) I suppose it's one way to keep them from getting too unruly up there! 

So...as cute as these little beds are, they pretty much don't care for them yet. 

Nap time was non-existent. 

And even though a tired little Hunter requested that she, "go take a nap" a whole hour and a half before her usual bed time, they are still wide awake up there. 

Losing steam, yes, but still wide awake. 

Taking turns getting stuck in between beds and jumping from bed to bed to bed. 

But that's okay. It's only the first night. Right???  :) 

Right??  :) 

Sleep Status

Sorry for the delay! Many have asked how the night went, so here is the update. I left off last night with them sleeping quietly. Honestly I thought it was going to be so dramatic, and it was so...not.

I imagine it's because in general, these kids love to sleep. We really worked hard on this. From the moment they came home from the NICU, they slept in their own cribs in their own room. Never in a bassinet, never in our room, never once in our bed. We tried very hard not to create bad habits that would later be hard to undo. We taught them early on how to be self-soothers by not coming to them when they cried, getting rid of pacifiers by 8 months and keeping a very strict nap/nighttime sleep routine. So they are good sleepers because they learned to be, not just because we're lucky. :)

So on the one hand, I'm not all that surprised that they went right to bed in their new big kid beds because they genuinely like to sleep. However, fear not. The night was not without its hangups.

At 1:00 in the morning, I heard the first thud followed by crying. Sure enough, Ethan had fallen off the bed. (unfortunately, our cribs turn into toddler day beds, with no railing at all to keep them in. So I hugged him (no talking to him) and put him right back into bed and covered him up. He went right back to sleep.

At 3:23, Colton fell off. Same routine. I got up, hugged him and put him back on his bed. He went right back to sleep.

At 4:00 I heard crying, but no thud. Sure enough no one had fallen off, but Colton was apparently having a bad dream or something (probably about falling off his bed!) So I just let him cry because I could tell he wasn't really awake.

At 5:45, another thud, and crying again. this time I went in to find that again, Ethan had fallen off and was standing in the middle of the room crying. Colton and Hunter were BOTH standing behind him, rubbing his back. OMG, they melt my heart. I put them all back in their beds and despite the fact that they normally wake up between 8 and 8:30, I had a feeling they weren't going to sleep for long because they had noticed that the sun was starting to come up. Hunter had soaked her diaper and her sheets were wet, so I changed her, and then she brought her pillow over to Colton's bed and lay down beside him. So I left them in there and went back to bed myself.

At 7:00 I heard them yelling at me. So I agreed to be awake for the day.

I got up, opened my door and saw this. :)

Then I went into their room and saw this.

Yeah, I may need to do something to prevent THIS from happening again. :)

So my assessment of the night is this: I firmly believe they would've slept right through the night until morning had they not fallen out. So the big dilemma right now is that they need to learn to adjust to their new beds and the lack of railing. Many have asked whether or not I'll go buy bed rails and my answer right now is 'Not yet.' Which is not to say I won't, but I want them to try and adjust to the beds for a little while first. (As Brian tells me, we learned how to sleep without falling out of OUR bed so they will too.) And honestly, Hunter did it so I'm confident the boys will too, in time.

That said, I am writing this entry at naptime- currently it is 1:58. I put them in their room, in their beds at 1:00.( There is a baby gate in their doorway. ) They are STILL running amuck up there. I can hear them on the monitor doing God knows what. I'm positive however that it is NOT napping. I went up twice to redirect them to their beds but I'm resisting the urge to go up again. I'm going to play it out and just see how long it takes before it's quiet. Then I'll go see what kind of damage they did and where they each ended up. :) And don't worry. I WILL take a picture. :)

Now you want to know my favorite part of the whole night time fiasco was? When we woke up, and I said to Brian, "So only 3 falls, not too bad." You know what he said? "They fell?" I swear to you, he could sleep through a tornado. Good thing I love him. :)

***UPDATE on the day's nap. Yeah, it never happened. Disaster. Too much fun swapping beds I guess. I'm SO not giving up on the 3 hour nap. I NEED it! I don't know if they still do, but I definitely do. Breathe.....tomorrow's another day, right??? :)

Good night babies, hello big kids.

First off, I DO realize it's a new month and that I don't HAVE to blog. BUT....today was a big day. Today, right before my eyes, my babies turned into big kids. Daddy turned their cribs into big kid beds today. Sniff...sniff...tissue please. We knew it was necessary earlier last week, but I was really hoping we could make it to Friday since interrupted sleep is pretty much a guarantee and I didn't want to have to be up early for work. So today was the day.

After nap time, Brian went up and took the side rails off.

Mary and I took the kids up to their room to see their new beds and get "the feel" of things. They were super excited at this new development. They took turns bed hopping and checking out everything new in each other's beds. Every so often we'd say "Okay, night night" and they would in fact lay their heads on their pillows. So that gave me a tiny shred of hope that they would still understand that their beds, albeit an invitation to freedom, still meant sleep time.

So they did pretty well in the day time. The interesting thing is this-once Ethan's crib became a bed, he wanted nothing to do with it. He cried when we put him on it. He immediately crawled off and went to Hunter's 'bed.' Luckily, she seemed okay with lying on his bed. We brought over her pink pillows and 8 woobies and and we encouraged her to try out her 'new new bed.' All the while, I'm pretty confident that when it's actually night time, he would go back to his bed.

Ethan on his new bed, checking out the new singular view finder that Aunt Mary brought over totally unaware that it would instantly become THE MOST COVETED TOY EVER. Yeah, those fights went on the whole night.

And then it became bed time.Reluctantly, Brian and I did our usual routine of "Okay everybody, let's go night night! Everybody goes night night!" And up the stairs they all marched. Same as usual, (except that tonight I brought a baby gate with me...)

Ethan was the first one up the stairs which worked out really well because I wanted to see which bed he would head to. And sure enough, he went straight to Hunter's bed and crawled on. Fortunately, she went right to his bed and lay down. We blew kisses, said goodnight, (took a picture) and left the room. And then we waited. Upstairs in the hallway, Brian and I sat. With the camera and a watch. And we waited. And waited. And waited. And finally, after 15 minutes of absolutely no movement, we went downstairs. It remained completely quiet for 28 minutes. Then we heard Ethan standing at their bedsides saying, "Where are you?" Well that invited a few minutes of laughing and chit chatting, but with one reminder yell from dad from downstairs to "GO to Sleep!" They all lay back down and are still quiet. So it's been 51 minutes so far and there is no sound coming from their room....

Perhaps this won't be as bad as we imagined?? Is that really possible? Anyhoo, I'm just going to sit back and listen for the Thuds of Bunchkins rolling off their beds. Goodnight friends.

(Notice the sign above Ethan's bed in the middle)