TO CRIB, OR NOT TO CRIB?

Well, after two weeks at school Bella pretty much no longer cries or even fusses really when we drop her off or during the day at school. So she has adjusted very well, which we are thankful for. She's learned the importance of washing hands, likes to help clean the classroom up with her teacher, enjoys music time and "bubble time," takes naps with the other kids, plays on the playground, and generally seems to dig the whole scene. Sometimes we we pick her up, she's reluctant to get in the car, preferring instead to explore the parking lot or the lawn in front of the school.

With all this going so well, her parents thought this past weekend would be a good time to try something new, something we'd been talking about doing for a while: taking Bella's crib out of her room and letting her sleep on her mattress on the floor. This is the sleeping method preferred for the Montessori method of child rearing, and it's recommended to start from birth even. Bella has been in her crib pretty much since she was three or four months old, so the change was going to be noticeable to say the least.

But we dismantled the crib, moved the mattress into another corner of her room (with less outlets around her), and put some pillows and blankets around it for safety when she rolled off the mattress. On night one, it took about an extra hour to get her to sleep. Then we had to go in and soothe her back to sleep a short time later. Finally around midnight, she got up and was up for almost two hours (and us along with her). But we put her back on her mattress after she fell asleep with us, and on Sunday morning we awoke to the sound of little feet in the hall. Bella came walking into our room, happy as a clam, holding Muttley the stuffed animal dog. For her afternoon nap on Sunday, she actually fell asleep in the car, and Jen carried her to her mattress and put her down. She woke up two hours later and came walking into the kitchen with another stuffed animal in her arms and happy as a clam.

Night two was similar to night one: long time to settle down, and a few hours later she was sleeping in the middle of the room on the carpet and fussing in her sleep. We could go in and rub her back to soothe her, but that only lasted for a little bit. Jen put her back in her mattress and she woke up soon after that and was up with us for nearly three hours in the middle of the night. To top it all off, Jen had (and continues to have) a nasty cough/sore throat/body ache kind of cold. So we woke up Monday miserable, and vowing to give it another try.

We moved her mattress back to the corner of her room where she was used to sleeping, and also put her normal sheet back on the mattress. That night, she fell asleep easier (she was really tired after the night before), but soon was fussing in her sleep in the middle of the floor. I got up and laid beside her, rubbing her back for half an hour, but she was not calming down. So I picked her up and rocked with her for 20 minutes until she was twitching in a deep sleep. Then I put her back on her mattress where she remained the rest of the night.

But at some point hat night - I think it was around 2:30 a.m. - I decided that this was not the right time for Bella or her parents to make this move. So on Tuesday while she was at school, Bella's crib reassembled itself in her room. And she slept soundly that night. So did her parents.