Bunk Beds and Fall Activities

We had a busy weekend.

Some time ago (I actually can't remember exactly how long. It feels like it was just last weekend, but I THINK it might have been the last weekend of September already), we began transitioning Gabe into a "big boy bed." The baby bed we had been using, which we had borrowed from a friend (who is pregnant herself now and trying to get her ducks in a row before the arrival date, thus necessitating us to put a bit of a wiggle on getting Gabe something new to sleep in), was capable of transforming from a crib into a toddler bed with the gradual removal of several pieces.

I began this transition slowly. Knowing how independent Gabe is, and how he likes to climb, we put off working him into his big boy bed for as long as possible. Visions of him refusing to go to bed and then, once there, getting out at just about any time during the night haunted us (and still do haunt me, since I'm the one that has to get him down for his naps every day). But we were faced with a deadline, so we had no choice but to take the plunge. I started by lowering part of the crib, er, cage (what are the bars on a crib called? They sure LOOK like a cage to me, but I can't imagine many parents would jump at the opportunity to refer to the place they put their children as a cage. Personally, I've always called it "baby jail," but, then, I'm not a very typical person), just to see if he would try to scale it when it looked less daunting.

He didn't, so I took the next step by removing the cage wall entirely and replacing it with one of those sleep guard baby-no-falling-outy things that people usually use on actual beds (again, no idea what it's called, but I think my name for it is kind of catchy). The no-falling-outy thing is only about 10 inches tall and didn't quite reach to the end of the bed, so I fully expected Gabe to start climbing over that as soon as it was his only obstacle to freedom.

But, again, he didn't. So, yesterday, we bought his bunk beds and I spent the better part of the day fighting vague, probably translated from Vietnamese (because that was its place of origin) instructions that, on at least one occasion, completely failed to account for some pretty important pre-drilled holes needed to install the ladder (and then they had me cover those same holes with the slats well before installing the ladder). As is usually the case with constructing ANY pre-made furniture, it was not much fun.

Gabe's big boy bed

I also noticed something rather troubling about his room in relation to how the bed fit into it. All of the original rooms on our second floor have ridiculously short ceilings--just over seven feet tall, in fact. WHY this is, I don't even have a guess. There is a sizeable attic above and the original construction folks could easily have put the ceilings up another two or three feet if they wanted (we did with the room we added on). But they didn't, and Gabe's room, in addition to having a short ceiling also has a ceiling fan.

I found out to the tune of a mildly contused shoulder and then, five minutes later, a slight graze to my left ear that the path of the ladder on the back of our bunk bed travels directly through the whirling blades of the ceiling fan. That's going to need a little rethinking.

And there we were, with his new bed installed. We duded it all up and added the fally-outy thing and noticed that there was still a sizeable gap between it and the ladder, which Gabe actually found while he was exploring his new furniture.

Oh, yeah, funny story about that. He was STOKED about the bed. I've rarely seen him so excited about anything before. He was jumping on it and climbing it and couldn't even piece two words together he was so excited. And then he shit himself from excitement. Actually shit himself. We'll have to keep an eye on that in the future. I'd hate for the kid to crap his drawers whenever he's going out for his first date.

What do you call an excitement induced crap? Excretement? A Fump (a fun-dump)?

So now we're debating on whether or not we like this setup for him. It's tough to get him into bed to tuck him in because of the minimal clearance between the beds, plus we really don't like him having an escape route that's TOO obvious. We might end up separating the bunks for awhile and seeing what that does for us.

In other news, we had a little family adventure to a pumpkin patch yesterday. Because this post is already pretty long, I won't go into the gritty details, but Gabe had a great time. It was a cute place and they had quite a number of activities for children to enjoy while they passed the time (and it was free unless you wanted to do a few of the special activities or buy pumpkins, which was also nice). We spent two hours there, but Gabe could have easily spent an entire afternoon.

An old timey water pump. He had some fun with this. They had a few other old pieces of farm equipment there to play with as well. Fun AND educational (I'm sure they told themselves as they installed it)!

Libby and Gabe climbing up a round bale. All the fun of itchy wheat straw but with slight elevation!

Gabe's favorite activity: a sandbox made of corn. Inside a horse tank. It was actually a rather nifty idea, and I'm sure the squirrels and raccoons LOVE it when it gets dark.