But also so exhausting, as it turns out. Caleb was super excited about the change. He kept talking about his new bed and new room and loved playing with all the toys in their new space. He even went to bed impressively well that first night. Except for one trip back to the crib - he was apparently a little confused and eventually grabbed his blankets and hoisted himself back in there at one point - all went well. He slept through the night as usual and woke up to the freedom of gathering all his cars right away and starting to play immediately. No more entrapment in the crib! What freedom!
Nap time the next day was flawless. I kid you not, I thought we were those incredibly lucky parents whose child miraculously handles the transition from crib to bed without incident. I could scarcely believe our luck! But then the second night happened. Before all was said and done, Caleb climbed back into the crib three times (and was put back in his new bed three times) and we ultimately had to snuggle with him until he was fast asleep. My heart ached because I knew he was confused. While the newness and freedom were invigorating, the crib was still sitting there, right next door, familiar and cozy and safe. We had taken away his comfortable routine and now he was feeling it. Oh, how my Mama heart ached!
And so began the new routine of lying next to Caleb on his new little mattress to snuggle with him till he fell asleep. It's actually been kinda nice at night. What parents don't love the opportunity to snuggle with their kid when he asks sweetly every night, "Snuggle? Snuggle?" The down side, however, is that our evenings have been eaten up with waiting for Caleb to fall asleep, which does not happen quickly. And during the day, it hasn't always been possible to snuggle with him because I've had an awake baby to tend to. And the baby can't be left alone anymore. He's crawling everywhere and pulling himself onto things and falling off those things and finding trouble everywhere he goes. So I tried leaving Caleb to fall asleep on his own, which failed utterly. The middle ground was to let Kai crawl all over the place and play with toys in the same room while I tried to get Caleb to stay on the mattress and fall sleep. You can guess how well that worked... It hasn't been perfect, but somehow we've managed to get through each day with the new routine.
After a full week of the new bed and the new room, it's slowly getting better. Caleb doesn't attempt to climb into the crib anymore, and although he gets up and grabs more toys after we're gone, he does usually go back to his new bed. We still find ourselves going up to snuggle with him and make sure he stays put, but the time required to accomplish this task has shortened. We keep repeating the mantra, "It's time to sleep now. Stay in bed and get some rest. It's time to sleep now..." and we trust that eventually the idea will stick. But it's taking some time. It's been a big transition for all of us!
The other big transition of the week is (drum roll please): we have new phones! I mean, smart phones. It's true, we've officially said goodbye to our flip phones and entered the 21st century. We held onto them for a long time. We loved our flip phones. They were easy to use, cheap, and simple. We are not techy people and we're still planning to use our phones just as phones - not gonna spend much time online and not gonna download a zillion apps. We love being simple in our use of technology and not letting it consume us. We're actually quite passionate about this, but that's another conversation. Suffice it to say, we now have smart phones and people can stop staring at us in public and asking, "Is that really a flip phone???"
With the excitement of new phones, however, comes more exhaustion. It's a transition. First was the major chore of having to shop around for a different provider, which meant visiting a few stores and having lengthy conversations with sales reps about various options and having our brains spin with too many details. Then we got the actual phones and spent forever trying to set them up how we want them, which required Google searches, phone calls back to the store, etc. And then I realized that not all of my contacts transferred to the new phone so I had to hunt down some numbers. Sigh... It's been tiring. Again, we are not techy people so it was undoubtedly more of a chore for us than for most people our age, but it was a chore nonetheless. And we are tired.
And tomorrow is Eli's last full day of residency!
What????
That's right! Tomorrow the bells will chime, the tambourines will shake, the gongs will resound, the choirs will sing the Hallelujah Chorus, and this lady and all her boys will be dancing like Dancing Machines.
The end of residency. The end of an era. Talk about a transition!
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