Where the White Things Are: The crib

Saturday, April 23, 2016

The crib

We took down the crib yesterday. It happened all of a sudden. In the morning I thought "why not today?" and then went for it. Jay and Rose stopped sleeping in their cribs right around 18 months old, give or take a few weeks, and since neither one of them had any issues with the change, I had always planned on removing Amber from her cage by 18 months too. Funny how even after nearly a year and a half of Amber repeatedly showing me that she is wildly different from baby Jay and baby Rose, I still insist on following my previous babycare experience with my third child. Thankfully, at least in the crib situation, Amber proved to be quite similar to her big brother and big sister. She watched me take down the crib yesterday morning, excitedly climbing on and off of her "new" bed--a mattress on the floor--the whole time.

When naptime came, I laid her on the big twin sized mattress with her Wub and her blanket, said nigh-night, and closed the door. I waited with bated breath. Predictably, Amber was up and roaming around the room, testing her new freedom. She banged on the door and even cried for a little bit, but eventually after about 20 or 30 minutes, all was quiet. I risked a tiptoe door-creak peek-in and found a sweet sweet scene:

[Rose decorated her bed with a striped scarf]

I hemmed and hawed about letting Amber keep her Wub binky. She's my first binky-baby and I always privately wondered at parents who let their kids have binkies after they learned to walk. Gasp. But having a binky baby of my own has wised me up. My original plan was no crib, no binky: take it away once she was out of the crib. But I decided that as long as she only gets it at naptime and bedtime, I'm ok with keeping the Wub for a while longer.

These are the last two pictures I took of Amber sleeping in her crib--on Monday, the day our camera came in the mail.

Adios, crib! Sniff. I tend to get rather attached to various objects that my babies used. This week I finally got rid of our double jogging stroller and it was like losing a pet. I felt such a sense of loss and sadness, and there's this big empty patch in our garage where it used to park. I logged a whole lot of miles with that heavy beast, just like I have logged a whole lot of pictures with this battered white crib. Grama Leslie loaned it to us when Jay was born. It was the crib SHE slept in when she was a baby--that's a sixty year old crib! It was remarkably sturdy for its age. We did get a new mattress for it when Jay was born.

Last night, on her second sleep outside of the crib, Amber managed to fall asleep on the mattress! I love how tiny one year olds look on big ole twin mattresses.

Amber slept on the floor again during her nap today. I always love checking on my sleeping children before I go to bed, and now it's even more fun to check on Amber because I never know where she'll be! Rose stays safe up on the top bunk, and Amber uses the entire bedroom like one big crib.

This evening Jeff helped me slide the crib into the storage space in the basement underneath the stairs. When we asked Leslie if she wanted her crib back, she asked if we'd store it--she wants to keep it in the family, and I agree. Some things are ok to hold onto. Multi-generational cribs are one of them. Some of my most beloved baby picture-treasures were taken in this old crib! I took a stroll through our family archives and made a file with all the best crib pictures. Ahh, sweet sweet memories. My babies. Sniff.

Baby Jay:

The crib is behind Jeff's chair in this picture--we crammed a whole lot into our tiny two bedroom student apartment at Walla Walla University. Jeff used to watch episodes of Jim Henson's Fraggle Rock with baby Jay on his lap.