Musical Beds

For the upteenth night in a row, I was awakened last night by the sound of "Mommmmmmy!!! BoBo!" at around 4:30 a.m. The routine is the same each night --- I hear the call of the lost bobo, stumble out of bed and limp (do you find that now that you're over 40 your joints don't actually function until you're out of bed for at least 5 or 10 minutes?) into Mace's room where I find him standing in his crib asking for his bobo, which he has dropped out of the crib while sleeping. I kneel down on all fours and sweep my arm around underneath the crib hoping to find the bobo without having to turn the light on. By the time I find it and give it back to Mace he's saying, "Mommy's bed?" so I pick him up and bring him into our bed where he falls back asleep for another couple of hours, three if I'm lucky.

I know what you're thinking -- you're thinking that if I cured him of the bobo addiction, I wouldn't have to be hunting for the bobo in the middle of the night. That would be too much trouble for Grandma (who puts Mace to sleep at naps and bedtime and would be the one to have to suffer the bobo to no-bobo transition) -- so I decided today that the solution to this problem would be to get rid of the crib altogether and put the boy in a big boy bed. My thinking on this is that when he loses the bobo in the middle of the night he can just get out of bed, find the bobo on his own and then get back in his own bed. If he wants to come into our bed at 4:30 a.m., that's fine -- he can just walk himself in here and crawl up in the bed. The key here is that mommy does not have to get out of bed at 4:30.

So we played Musical Beds (not the adult-themed game you are surely thinking of) today. Mace's crib was dismantled and removed from his room:

And the bed that was in Casey's room that has the slats on the sides was moved into Mace's room:

(Mace taught himself to read during this process. It took awhile.)

Once Casey's old bed was Mace's new bed, Casey needed a new bed, too, so he got Grandma's bed:

(Right after I took that picture, Casey stuck one of his legs out to the side and said, "Hey look, if I sit like this I look like Princess Leah!") And before Flamingo Joe's brother and sisters get all offended on Grandma's behalf, Grandma had been requesting a twin bed in place of the double bed in her room for some time now. So we moved the twin bed with no side rails that had been in Mace's room with no one sleeping on it down to Grandma's. I was very happy that we accomplished the bed switch without having to spend any money whatsoever. Though it looks like I'll have to buy a bedspread for Casey that fits his new bed -- Princess Leah or not, even Casey draws the line at floral quilts.