In many ways, Lukas is a regular little kid.  From an outside point of view, he is a very normal little guy.  That is, until you look at his crib.  We got him (ok, my mom bought it but I picked it out) one of those great cribs that converts into a toddler bed and then a day bed, and then a twin sized bed.  It’s a honey colored wood and despite a recall on it a year or so ago that oddly didn’t affect our crib, this thing works out great.  Well, it did. 

Once Lukas started being able to sit up on his own, we immediately lowered the mattress and took the bumpers off (like all the books say to do) so that his bed would be a safe environment for him.  When he was able to start pulling himself up into a standing position, I started noticing that he was chewing on the railings of his bed a little bit.  Then, as he got older, it went from chewing the railings to literally stripping the wood off with his teeth and I would wake up in the morning and hear him in their coughing and choking on wood splinters.  Naturally I freaked out and scoured the internet looking for some sort of chew guard that would protect him.  When my search turned up fruitless, I did what any native born WV girl would do:  I duct taped towels to the railings so at least he wasn’t choking on wood anymore.  It looked like a crib in a psycho ward. 

That didn’t work.  He stripped the duct tape off with his teeth and chewed huge holes into the towels.  I would go to get him in the morning and the floor around his crib would be surrounded by gnawed up strips of tape and thousands of towel threads.  I askred Jessie if he had any original ideas.  Well he didn’t.  Instead of duct taping towels to the crib, he duct taped the crib itself.  Of course this didn’t work, it just made a huge mess with chewed up duct tape all over the floor. 

Finally, when I reached the end of my rope, I made the executive decision to transition the bed into a toddler bed and see how that works.  With a toddler bed, he still sleeps on a crib mattress (but I got him some Spongebob sheets, which he loves).  The mattress is just really close to the floor and the side rail is gone and replaced with two smaller rails that don’t keep him from getting out of bed on his own, but protect him from falling out of bed at night.  As a mom, it makes me a little sad to look at that bed because it is not a baby’s bed anymore.  (Also, while I was packing away his old sheets, quilts, and dust ruffle I cried because I knew that they would never come out of storage again.  When we get a place of our own, there’s no need to put the baby stuff back.  We’ll need little boy stuff.  I love that more than I can say, but he really is growing up too damned fast.)

Last night was his first night in the bed.  He didn’t get out.  He stayed in his bed.  This morning when he woke up, I went in there and curled up in bed with him (I fit now because that side rail is gone) and we had a bit of a snuggle before starting our day.  When he took his nap, I snuggled up with him again in his bed and read to him.  He sat next to me with his head resting on my chest as I read to him.  He slept perfectly and didn’t get out of bed. 

I just gave him a bath and put him down for the night.  I am downstairs listening to him making squishy sleepy noises through the baby monitor…and no, he hasn’t gotten out of bed.  I’m not getting excited, though.  I know, as his mother, that it simply hasn’t occurred to him yet that he can get out of that bed on his own.  He’ll figure it out sometime soon and I’m going to be awakened at 2 a.m. to the noises of one of his stupid singing stuffed animals.  That will be a fight between my son and I that will last a few weeks.  He’s a really good listener, but when he really wants to do something I can suck it as far as he is concerned.  Oh well. 

I meant to take pictures of his bed and of the damage he has inflicted to it, but today was crazy for me.  I’ll try to remember to do it tomorrow and simply add them on to this post.  Your jaws will drop when you see how badly chewed that bed is.  My mom jokes that I need to get him a rawhide bone.  The reason why that is really funny is because I actually considered it for a minute.

Here are the pictures:

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