Several people have asked, so I’m letting everyone know that the earthquake in central China was not felt in Singapore. I know it looks close on a map, but the flying time from Singapore to Hong Kong is about three and a half hours, so imagine people in Atlanta trying to feel an earthquake in Salt Lake City. No chance. No impact in our house. No aftershocks.
So we converted the cribs to toddler beds when Liam decided to try sky diving over the top rail (his mother caught him mid-air). The matching toddler bed rails we bought and brought to Singapore with us were the wrong model. Tiffany bought portable bed rails.
These were not designed with crib mattresses or my sons in mind. The weight of the mattress is what holds the rail in place, IF the child is laying on the mattress. The rail becomes quite mobile when the child bucks his hips and drives both heels into the rail while in mid air (Liam). It also moves easily when the child is jumping up and down on the mattress while holding on to the remaining full sized crib rail (Graeme). Tiffany gave up when they tried to ride "choo-choo rail" (more about choo-choo variants when Tiffany finally blogs) by sitting on them and managed to fall out of the bed with the rail underneath them and the mattress landing on top. No one was injured; no one under three feet tall anyway.
We now have cool Dr. Seuss looking furniture from the IKEA Mamut series.
So we converted the cribs to toddler beds when Liam decided to try sky diving over the top rail (his mother caught him mid-air). The matching toddler bed rails we bought and brought to Singapore with us were the wrong model. Tiffany bought portable bed rails.
These were not designed with crib mattresses or my sons in mind. The weight of the mattress is what holds the rail in place, IF the child is laying on the mattress. The rail becomes quite mobile when the child bucks his hips and drives both heels into the rail while in mid air (Liam). It also moves easily when the child is jumping up and down on the mattress while holding on to the remaining full sized crib rail (Graeme). Tiffany gave up when they tried to ride "choo-choo rail" (more about choo-choo variants when Tiffany finally blogs) by sitting on them and managed to fall out of the bed with the rail underneath them and the mattress landing on top. No one was injured; no one under three feet tall anyway.
We now have cool Dr. Seuss looking furniture from the IKEA Mamut series.
This should last the boys until we return to the US. Keeping them in the these beds (and frankly the converted cribs with a rail) is a matter of either standing in a corner of the room and putting them back in bed every time the get out or begin "shenanigans," or standing just outside the cracked door and peering through the gap and doing the same thing. This process used to take an hour or two. Now it’s getting down to ten to fifteen minutes for Graeme and half an hour before Liam gives up. Mommy deserves a medal (another one).
They are smart and have learned what combinations of their limited vocabulary will be ignored and which will result in attention. Winners include:
1. “Poop, poop, poop.” This was not a bluff the last two nights.
2. “Dink uh wadder, dink uh wadder.” This is an old standby and almost always a fake.
3. “Huts, mouff huts,” alternately “hed hutts” this is accompanied by rubbing the appropriate body part. Cause and effect are at issue here. Of course your head hurts you were just banging it against the headboard.
4. “Medisen, medisen.” This is a hold over from their teething and recent illnesses, sometimes their like little crack addicts.
5. “Boogas, wear da boogas?” Oddly the answer to this is not in your nose. Liam is struggling with the “k” in books. He also is unwilling to allow for the possibility of a lone book, it is always “boogas” plural.
The other fun trick is that when they wake up in the middle of the night there is now nothing to stop them from getting out of bed and coming to visit, whine, demandvodka water, or a fresh diaper. Since the toddler beds arrived each night has brought a different permutation of this at about 4 am, with Graeme getting put back down falling dead asleep and then springing awake like some electrified puppet five minutes later and repeating the cycle. Last night though, was different. I heard a squeak at about 3:30 that sounded like someone being restless. So I went to look and head off the intruder before he could wake his mother and get us both in trouble.
As I cracked the door I realized that our Ikea purchases were a waste of money. Both toddler beds stood empty. The comforters and pillows were on the floor next to them (crash mats for sleeping rolls) were also unoccupied. May be it was an aftershock from the China earthquake, but Liam was two feet from his bed asleep on the bare floor and Graeme was three feet from his asleep on the rug. I’ll probably get some grandma scolding for this, but I left them alone (I was too tired to take a picture and I know I’ll get grandpa scolding for that). Putting them back in bed would only have been an invitation for them to wake up. Besides, they came and saw us on their own three hours later. I always thought the phrase pitter patter of little feet was cute… not so much.
They are smart and have learned what combinations of their limited vocabulary will be ignored and which will result in attention. Winners include:
1. “Poop, poop, poop.” This was not a bluff the last two nights.
2. “Dink uh wadder, dink uh wadder.” This is an old standby and almost always a fake.
3. “Huts, mouff huts,” alternately “hed hutts” this is accompanied by rubbing the appropriate body part. Cause and effect are at issue here. Of course your head hurts you were just banging it against the headboard.
4. “Medisen, medisen.” This is a hold over from their teething and recent illnesses, sometimes their like little crack addicts.
5. “Boogas, wear da boogas?” Oddly the answer to this is not in your nose. Liam is struggling with the “k” in books. He also is unwilling to allow for the possibility of a lone book, it is always “boogas” plural.
The other fun trick is that when they wake up in the middle of the night there is now nothing to stop them from getting out of bed and coming to visit, whine, demand
As I cracked the door I realized that our Ikea purchases were a waste of money. Both toddler beds stood empty. The comforters and pillows were on the floor next to them (crash mats for sleeping rolls) were also unoccupied. May be it was an aftershock from the China earthquake, but Liam was two feet from his bed asleep on the bare floor and Graeme was three feet from his asleep on the rug. I’ll probably get some grandma scolding for this, but I left them alone (I was too tired to take a picture and I know I’ll get grandpa scolding for that). Putting them back in bed would only have been an invitation for them to wake up. Besides, they came and saw us on their own three hours later. I always thought the phrase pitter patter of little feet was cute… not so much.
2 comments:
Either I have forgotten the memory (like labor pains) or my memory is still in intact and the problem of staying in bed at night (which the Michigan twins are also experiencing) was not an issuse with their father's. This grandma would have let them sleep in peace as you did, but I also would have wanted a picture.
Indeed! I always let sleeping children lie. That's very much a risk vs. reward scenario in that the risk of waking them up & having them run amok is certainly not worth the reward of having them asleep in their beds vs. on the floor where they are obviously already comfortable.
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