Monkey Child

Fiona is 14 months old, but instead of learning to walk, she's been putting all her efforts into climbing. I was (foolishly) checking my email in the living room last week when I looked over to find her sitting on the kitchen table. She scaled a rope ladder at the children's museum like she was spiderman. She can effortlessly climb onto the couch, and then from the couch to the coffee table, despite the table being almost 2 feet away. I don't know where it came from, but she's got monkey in her somewhere.

Fast forward to Thursday night. Ben and I were both tired, and looking forward to getting our darling, crabby, overtired child off to bed. However, Fiona had other plans. After we put her to bed, she started really screaming. Usually she goes to bed very easily, lies down with very little fuss, and goes to sleep, so we waited a few minutes to see if she'd stop. Suddenly there was a loud thump, and the screaming continued. I rushed in, and sure enough monkey girl had managed to channel her rage into some kind of super strength, and climb out of her crib and fall on the floor. Crap. Now what? We couldn't put her back in... she was furious, and likely to just do it again... we couldn't try to have her sleep wth us... she stopped falling asleep with either of us in the room as soon as she became aware we really existed, and needs to be left alone to put herself to sleep wthout distractions... we couldn't just put the mattress on the floor in her bedroom because she would immediately crawl off it and climb on the bookcase... we were in a pickle.

We tried a last minute dash to babies 'r' us to see if they had a solution... they had nothing. So, defeated and frustrated, we came home again. On the way Fiona fell asleep in the car. We hoped that we could get her into the crib without her waking up too much, and maybe she'd just go to sleep and we'd get her out as soon as we heard her wake up in the morning. No such luck. She was very very sleepy, but the second her body touched the mattress, she bolted awake and resumed her Olympic standard screaming.

Time to think of a new plan. And here it is. We moved the pack and play into her room. It's much lower, so if when she climbed out, she'd have less far to fall. We also moved almost all of the furniture out so she wouldn't have anything to climb on that could topple over and squish her. We surrounded the pack and play with pillows and blankets so she would have a soft landing, and we put the lamp and monitor in the stupid, useless crib, so at least she wouldn't electrocute herself with those. Here's what we're left with...

(click to enlarge so you can really see the very proud grin on her face)

After she finally fell asleep I did some googling, and ordered a crib tent online. Here's a picture of one in action. I can't tell if the kid is angry or excited, but either way, she seems pretty well trapped in there!

Genius. And a little more humane than chicken wire (thanks for that suggestion, Michelle ;-)

Apparently it will be here on Monday. Hopefully it'll work. If she seems upset by the whole 'being stuck in a cage' thing, I'll throw in a bunch of bananas and remind her that she got herself into it in the first place with her monkey antics.