At two years and nine months Nora is still sleeping in a crib. She has been in a crib far longer than any of my kids. I moved Emma out of her crib at 22 months, because Ian was about to be born and he needed the crib. Ian climbed out of his crib shortly before his second birthday, so I had to move him to a big bed earlier than I wanted to.

So far, Nora has been happy in her crib. I have been expecting her to climb out for months now. This past week she finally did it.

Last week she woke up from her nap and decided she wanted out. She came walking up the stairs and startled me! I quickly turned around and asked Emma if she had gotten Nora out, all the while knowing that she hadn’t. Nora was so proud of herself that she had figured out how to get up herself.

That night as I was putting her to bed, she tried to climb into the crib. She almost fell, and I knew that it was time to move her to a bed. For the time being, I decided to just take the side off her crib so she could sleep in it like a toddler bed. She and I went down to her room with the tools and took off the side. She was so proud of her “new” big girl bed.

The first night she went to sleep as peacefully as always. I tucked her in and she went right to sleep. The problem was, she work up at 2:00am and decided to exercise her new found freedom. She came in my bedroom and announced that she was awake and ready for breakfast! I explained that it was still the middle of the night, and that she needed to stay in bed until it got light out. I tucked her back in, and didn’t hear from her until the morning.

Luckily for all of us, she has slept all night every night since. So far the transition to a big girl bed has been nearly painless. It has been a welcome relief. After the nightmare we went through to get Ian to sleep in a real bed, this has been a walk in the park.