When we got home after work yesterday, Jayne told us that Allie tried to vault out of her crib after her nap. :/ Allie customarily gets 15 minutes post-nap to hang out in her crib and do her own thing, “own thing” meaning, primarily, to poop. She’d stay contentedly in there much longer, but we don’t want her to sit in her own poop longer than that. In was in these 15 minutes that Jayne looked over at the babycam monitor and saw that Allie’s upper body was on the wide front rail of the crib with one leg already over. She needed only to lean a little more and she’d be on the floor. Jayne freaked out and sprinted for Allie’s room, screaming “ALLIE!” on the way to stop Allie. She said when she burst in there, Allie was so startled and felt so reprimanded that she (Allie) was heaving and sobbing. Jayne said it took awhile for her own heart rate to go back to normal. Now that’s a caring nanny. 🙂

Jayne thought Allie may have gotten an extra height boost from stepping on the crib bumpers that line the perimeter of Allie’s crib. I’ve seen Allie step on them before but didn’t think it’d occurred to her to use it as a step-stool. I was hoping this was an isolated incident so that we could leave the bumpers on a bit longer, since Allie sometimes wedges her head in the soft corner and/or hangs a foot out between the crib slats in her sleep.

But she’d already used the front part of the crib rail like a ballerina leg-stretching bar recently (which she did while I was in there so I just pushed her foot off), and the entire evening with us, she was behaving like a little monkey, climbing onto the La-Z-Boy, climbing onto the back rest of the La-Z-Boy to look out the window behind it, climbing in and out of her tub. When Mr. W said we need to take the bumpers off, I didn’t protest. Luckily, Allie nursed herself to sleep last night and stayed asleep (for the 4th night in a row) when transferred to her crib, so she didn’t notice that the bumpers were gone. Her crib looks so roomy and bare to me now.

If Allie is still able to get herself over the rail, we’re going to have to change the rail to make her bed a toddler bed, with lower front rails and an opening about halfway in, so that she doesn’t hurt herself dropping from the top of the crib rail to the floor when she’s in there alone. I have no clue how to get her to stay in bed during her long latency periods if she has direct access out, so I’m hoping this stage stays away a little (a lot) longer. She can and does open her bedroom door unassisted, but that’s less of an issue to me than her pulling out all her dresser drawers and hurting herself while we sleep.

Last night, just in case, I pulled the little plastic footstool away from the side of her crib and more toward the center of the room. Just in cause she’s still able to vault over the crib rails and fall on the stool. She did fine on Night 1 of the debumperized bed, staying asleep until Mr. W woke her up to get ready this morning, so she probably never noticed the bumpers were gone. Hopefully the nap goes well today.