Isaac At 18 Months

Isaac had his 18 month checkup last week at the pediatrician's office. He weighed in at 31 pounds, and measured 36 inches tall. He's the size of your average 29 month old child. They decided to call his breathing issues "asthma," and we will be using inhaled steroids with him for the foreseeable future, but other than that, everything is great!

Apparently in honor of this grand proclamation, he decided to start climbing out of his crib. I was not in the least prepared for him to do that, I have to tell you. The first time he did it, it was the middle of the night. I heard him cry out, then a thud, and then he started to scream. When I rushed to his room to get him, he had the lights on and he opened the door for me.

The next day, my good friend Jeni gave me her toddler bed. I had Todd take the crib down and I got that set up for him. He would not stay in it. So, I had Todd put the crib back up and hoped he'd scared himself well enough when he fell out that he wouldn't do it again. We considered ordering a crib tent.

The next morning at around 5:30 am, I heard his sweet little voice chattering away as he came wandering into our room. Clearly, my hopes were in vain that he would voluntarily stay in his "cage" once he'd figured out how to set himself loose.

At this point, I was in a dither. I knew he couldn't stay in the crib, but wasn't sure I wanted to go the tent route. Friday night he stayed in without incident, so my hopes were renewed - until he fell out Saturday at nap time and hit his head on the floor, giving himself a nice bump and a rug burn on his forehead. Clearly, we could not leave him in the crib, but Todd was not excited about taking the crib down again, either. We ended up taking one side off and putting up a bed rail, left over from when the girls transitioned into twin beds. I put a doorknob cover on the inside, both to keep him from escaping and also to prevent him locking the door, so that I don't have to search out that rotten little key in the wee hours of the morning.

It took a couple of nights of him waking up to play in the middle of the night, but he did start sleeping through again. He's still getting up much earlier than I would like, but the lack of screaming is wonderful.

Today, while I was telling some friends about our escapades with Isaac, he came trotting down the hall. I prayed that I had just left his door the tiniest bit open and went down to check how he'd gotten out. He had taken his little stool over to the door and taken the doorknob cover off. Bless his little pea-pickin' heart!

I feel like I should call professional baby-proofers, but at least he's sleeping again. We decided against the crib tent, because he's so tall, I think he would be able to unzip it. I'm still having a difficult time wrapping my brain around having an 18 month old child who is no longer contained in a crib, but I suppose I will eventually get over it. :-)