I am trying to get back into the swing of Camp Sweatshop this summer, but oh my gosh, how tempting it is to not do anything and just let them lay around and watch television all day. You have to rage against the dying of the light.

I decided to start off easy last Friday by teaching The Caterpillar how to make a bed.

Only one problem.

She doesn't yet have a bed.


I have no words to explain how awesome this is, but at the wise old age of two years and nine months, she has not yet figured out, nor ever even attempted to climb out of this crib. She wakes up and just stands there, calling for someone to come and get her. This takes the form of her yelling at the top of her lungs.

Sometimes she tries the polite route:

"GOOD MORNING MOMMA! I SAID GOOD MORNING MOMMA! I SAAAAAIIID GOOOOOD MOOOOOOOOOOONNNIIIIIING MOOOOOMA!

Sometimes, it's a statement of the obvious:

"MOOOOOOOOMAAAA! I'M AWAAAAAAAKE!"

Sometimes, it's confusing:

"MOOOOOOOOMAAAA! I'M ASLEEEEEEEP!"

But despite this, the crib has been mostly handy so far. When she has a time out, we put her in her cage, er, crib and she can't come out until we decide it's time. (Oh and I know you're not supposed to do that, associating bed with time outs, but we have a small house and there aren't that many places for her to go. So far it hasn't backfired on us that way.) Bedtime is a breeze because when it's time to go to bed, we put her in and she can't get out. Personally, if it were up to me and the stars aligned, I'd leave her in the crib until she went to college.

But as she gets older, there are more annoyances than just waking up to a tiny voice screaming in your ear. Mainly this is due to the fact that we got the crib secondhand after two children had already gone through it and we know it's days are numbered. The drawer underneath doesn't really work well anymore. I seldom drop down the drop-down side because I'm afraid that it will never drop back up again. After The Dormouse's unrelenting beat down on the bed four years (it turns into a toddler bed and she used it up until The Caterpillar was born and outgrew her bassinet) and now The Caterpillar's, it looks a little like a swayback mule turned upside down.

It's time.

Time to say goodbye to the crib.

The problem is, this is what her bed looks like right now.


It's a bunk bed, but we never put the bed part on under the bunk in order to have room for their toys. I don't really want her sleeping on the loft bed, because she has a tendency to fall off of it and I do not to spend one more evening debating whether or not to take her to the ER to evaluate for a possible concussion.

So on Friday I climbed up in the attic, pulled down all the extra pieces and we made her bed.

Literally.


Now I've just got to get her to sleep in it.