Time keeps on ticking (measuring the years in beds)

One night this week, while I was at a work-thing for a colleague, Lester surprised me by taking the boys' guardrails off their beds.

So in just under 4 years, we've gone from this:

Their cribs before they were even born. This is the room that is now Clair's.

 to this:

We moved the boys' cribs into the guest room when I was pregnant with Clair, to make room for her things in the small room.

to this:

After Dean tried to jump to his death from the crib a couple times -- toddler beds!

We converted their cribs to toddler beds in December 2012.

to now this:

NO GUARDRAILS!

After bath, Dean was having a hard night, and felt the need to take to his bed, like it was a fainting couch.

At some point, these beds are supposed to be able to convert to twin-size (though I'm not sure how) and then to full-sized. So we have a ways to go before we've gotten our money's worth out of them. But I already feel a little bit like, "Whoa! Where did the time go?" How on Earth am I going to feel when they're in FULL beds?

I remember when they both fit in a Pack 'n Play, all teeny and sweet, with fat rolls on their legs.

And now they have no guardrails. They get up in the morning and make their beds. (The night they got their guardrails taken off, Cary woke up at FOUR A.M. to make his bed, he was so excited. Yay for us.) They wake up in the middle of the night and take themselves to the bathroom. They stay up way too late, sitting up in their beds, giggling and singing and talking about things Lester and I have no part of.

How did this happen? Where did the time go?

Big boy beds! And the aquarium!

The big boy beds are here!

(I know saying this probably means the kiss of death, but...) So far so good!

Yay! I'm a big boy!

I'm free! I'm free!

Lester converted them on Sunday, so we've only had one nap and one overnight to practice, but aside from a little bit of extra time to actually get them in the beds, we have not had any issues. They stayed in their beds for the entire nap and overnight too. Both times one of us had to go in the room once to say, "Hey, knock it off!" for some reason or another. But as is usually the case with them, right after that, they were conked out.

So let's see how this goes from here on out.

Also, we took all the kids to the Baltimore Aquarium for the first time. We met up with our friends David and Stephanie, and their beautiful boys Dylan, 2, and Landon, 2 months.

Here we are at the dolphin show, which was a huge hit!! Landon is wearing the outfit we bought him, which says, "World's cutest little brother!" Awwwww.

This is the classic Dean face.

The boys loved all the fish and the dolphins, but truthfully, I think they liked riding on all the escalators much more. So we'll wait awhile before paying the $30-per-adult (!!!!) ticket price until we think they are really ready.

Afterwards, we went out for lunch at the Inner Harbor and ate seafood -- appropriate, right? :-) 

There's a huge guitar on top of the restaurant. When Cary saw it, this was his reaction. He thought it was the silliest thing he'd ever seen.

  All in all, a  very good weekend!

The end is near!

No, I'm not talking about the Mayan calendar.

I'm talking about the end of life as we know it. This week, Dean Davis learned to climb out of his crib.

Pause with me here while I silently mourn the era of putting children to bed and not worrying about them getting out of the bed again until we were good and ready to come get them.

....

....

....

OK. I'm working on pulling it together. (sniff. sniff. sigh.)

The thing is, we tried for a few days to just tell him to "Stop it!" firmly, and also to "indicate" (read: lie) that it was actually impossible to climb out of the crib. Unfortunately, my child never listens to a thing we say. And eventually, he made it all the way out, and fell -- with a heart-stopping thud -- on to the floor. He landed on his arm in such a way that I could readily see the soft cast he's going to have at some point, at least once, but maybe more than that, in his young life. Thankfully, we were spared a trip to the emergency room -- and he only cried for about 5 hearty minutes.

Lester tried to linger a little longer in denial, by saying, "Well, at least he won't try that again!"

But the next night, our little maverick cried real tears because we'd pushed his crib too far away from the dresser for him to get the leverage he needed to hoist himself over the crib rail. Real tears! This daredevil was determined to try it again! The night after nearly falling to his death!

So as we all know, this means the cribs have to go. Once a climber, always a climber.

So, this weekend, Lester's going to break the cribs down into toddler beds. And life as we know it will end.

Thanks, Mayans.

(Throwback pic of the boys in the little room -- which is now Clair's -- when Cary first learned to stand up in the crib and Dean was all like, "Hey! How the heck does he do that?")

The good ole days.