Tell me about your transition out of cribs...

My boys are two and a half. My husband is in the Navy and we will be moving to Germany in six months. In the meantime, we will be moving around, living in two different places while my husband does some training. I really do not want to bring the cribs. It'll be a pain! They slept in pack in plays while we are out of town for Thanksgiving and they are really too big for them. So, I am thinking about transitioning out of the cribs, so they can sleep in twin beds in the two places we will be before we move to Germany. I am TERRIFIED! They are great sleepers and take three hour naps in the afternoon. I am so scared that once they are not in cribs anymore that that will go away.

How did things change when you transitioned out of cribs?

Sarah

 

No change at all for us when we moved the girls out of cribs. They were great sleepers before and they're still great sleepers. The first few nights Piper fell out of bed, but she learned to roll in the bed without falling, and all has been great every since. We transitioned at 20 months and since then they've slept on a futon at Grandma's, single mattresses on the floor at Grandmas, an Aero bed at another Grandmas, a queen sized hotel bed, a twin bed at my friend's house, and the bottom bunk of another friend's kid's bed. If your boys are short enough, you can fit two on one twin bed if you have them sleep width-wise not length-wise.

 

That is good news. I too am in the process of transitioning out of cribs at 2.5 and am SO worried about the transition. My kids sleep 12.5-13 hours at night and 2-3 hour naps and Im petrified that this will go out the window...

Good to hear some positive experiences

 

There have been quite a few Topics about how the transition goes lately; you might want to do a search on this forum to see all of the older feedback. If I remember correctly, not very many people had problems. Good luck!

 

We just switched (Thanksgiving Day) to toddler beds. Both of mine were great sleepers in cribs so I was petrified to make the change, too. To my surprise, DD has done wonderful. She does not seem affected by the change at all. DS on the other hand has been somewhat of a challenge. The first few days/nights he wouldn't stay in bed. I am now using the supernanny or 123 Magic approach (they are pretty much one in the same). It is helping tremendously! If you have problems with them getting up out of bed, I would highly recommend this approach.

Overall, it hasn't been as awful as I had imagined.

 

Our transition last month went surprisingly easy. The first night Ana tried to get out of bed and run around, but we put her in a time out, and she didn't try that again

 

We had a really hard transition. They weren't bad at all about staying in bed at bedtime but they'd get up in the wee morning hours and sneak downstairs to get into random trouble as quietly as possible. I belled their door and they learned to silence the bell. I moved the bell up higher so they couldn't reach it. Still, we've never gone back to sleeping until it's light out. Naps went completely out the window initially and they will take one now only if I stay in the room until they go to sleep. So annoying. I also had to lock their closet up high and take off every bit of window hardware in their room. Even so, they've recently learned to open the window locks without the handles and push the windows open so we're back to dangerous and scary to leave them unattended in their room while awake (which rules out any hope of shifting them back to napping on their own).

Sorry, I know that's not what you want to hear but FWIW, I don't know anyone else with these same issues so perhaps my kids are freaks.