"aaall done cwib" - hana at 25 months

hana has unceremoniously let us know she is ready to move on from her crib. you see, she has been physcially able to climb out of her crib for many months now. she's just not be been terribly interested in it. now that she's all into "i do it 'self" - doing things herself - she would prefer to determine on her own, when it is time for her to go to sleep.

for a little background, i'll explain that sometimes on a weekend night, when it's getting close to bed time, instead of the usual routine, she's allowed to pick a movie and have "quiet time" on the couch before bed. she calls it going "night night couch". specifically, she expresses "no wan' it night night cwib. i wanna go night night couch". generally, she asks for this at every sleep opportortunity. i however, do not consider her chillin' on the couch to be any sort of night night time becuase, at best, she will usually watch the entire movie and not fall alseep at all. at worst, as most frequently, she waits until mommy falls asleep (because it's hard to be riveted to the 13,oooth showing of "madagascar") and she gets up and runs around getting into stuff. she's still watching the movie, but it's not "quiet time" and there is no rest involved (well, at least not for her).

so one day last week, after failing her requisite campaign to have "night night couch", jon put her down for her nap in her crib. she resisted quite a bit and cried about it for about 15 minutes. and she settled down, as she usually does and just kept herself enterained in her crib, talking to herself, playing with her furry friends, singing to herself... this went on for another, say 45 minutes. then it grew quiet and we assumed she fell asleep.

after some suspicious clunking, we opened her door to find her out of her crib, with her hair smoothed down with a half a bottle of leave-in conditioner which she had personally applied. i suppose she thought she was "helping" since she likes to "help" put in the product when i style her hair in the mornings... but this was really ridiculous. we tried feebly to stifle our laughs but eventually, we couldn't help it. we know we were sending the wrong message, but if it's any consulation to you she did have to have an immediate bath which she found most unpleasant.

this crib hopping has become a thing for her and we've decided that until we get the bed set up for her, we're going to try and facilitate her getting in and out of the crib less perilously. of course, she won't do it herself when it's convenient for us... you know, it would really be ok for me if in the mornings when she calls out:"moooooooooommyyyyy, i wake up! all done cwib!" she then just got herself out of bed and met me half way. when i encourage her to do that, she claims she needs "help up". yeah right.

so i think we are going to set a bed up for her in the next couple of weeks. in the meantime, we need to keep her form marauding the house in some way that doesn't involve her being locked in (like the literature from our pediatrician says to do!). ironically, what seems to be the most effective is leaving the door open. that way she can hear what's going on in the house and we can hear her and check on her more easily. we'll see how long that lasts...