Big Boy Bed...Not Big Enough!

Ever since he was about six months old, Ethan has been a good sleeper. (Before 6 months is a different story!) He is a good napper and a good night sleeper. Back in January when we were getting ready for Allison we bought Ethan a big boy bed. Over the next several months he thought it was great to play on, but wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with sleeping in it. We tried everything we could think of...books about big boy beds, bribery, tough love and many other things. Everytime we tried to put him in it he would scream bloody murder and he got to the point when we would get him ready for bed he would point to his crib and say, "Night night! Night night! Night night!" until he was sure that is were we were going to put him. So, finally in June we decided to resort to drastic measures. I took Ethan out for a couple of hours and Scott disassembled the crib and put it in our shed. We told him he could take a few of his toys to bed with him and the first time we put him in his big boy bed he still cried for 15-20 minutes and the second time for just a few minutes. After that, he decided that getting to take stuff to bed with him is pretty great and his number of bedtime must-haves continues to grow (despite our best efforts to minimize it). He is now up to two pillows, two blankets, two stuffed animals, more trains and cars than will fit in his Elmo basket (the Elmo basket is how we carry all of the trains and cars to bed), and about 4 books. Needless to say, some nights he will stay up until 10 or 11 o'clock playing in his bed and every now and then we will hear him playing in the middle of the night. But how can you blame him when he doesn't hardly have enough room to sleep?!?

This is what I found when I went to get him up this morning. He wasn't happy that mom was starting the day by snapping pictures!