One night stand

Incidentally, last weekend's hiking and company picnic pics are now posted - thanks again to J and S for a wonderful time!

Early Friday morning, Zachary was lying in bed with us - he often comes in and we let him make super-cute happy noises and play with the sheets for a bit before we're fully awake (particularly as this is generally at around 5:30 in the morning). Then, he was suddenly sitting up, and then climbing over daddy. Meh announced that this definitely meant it was time to lower his mattress.

We had two competing fears with these adjustable baby mattress frames. One: now that he was sitting up from a lying down position, he'd be able to pull himself up with the mattress in its top position, vault out of the bed, and start doing cartwheels around the room. Two: conversely, if we adjusted the mattress too low, we're too short to reach all the way over and into the crib, and would have to toss him over the crib frame. So we started with a single notch lower (I think his bed has three steps). Okay, I'll admit, there was a third fear -- that I'd have to disassemble the entire crib to get access to the mattress frame again to lower it. Almost, but through a variety of arm contortions, I managed to make it happen with the crib intact.

We apparently made this switch not a moment too soon - last night, Zachary started crying about an hour after going to sleep. This in itself is really unusual; he's usually down for the night when he passes out. But he was getting more and more angry and, well, it actually sounded loud. So I went into the room after a few minutes to investigate, and lo and behold, he was standing in his bed with his arms holding onto the front of the crib, bawling and looking at me. It was the saddest (but very adorable) image and milestone for the little man. We'd actually read about this kind of thing in several of our baby books - how they sometimes figure out how to stand and then don't know how to (or are too hysterical to) sit/lay back down. So I soothed him for a few minutes, and then laid him back down. A few minutes later, he was crying and back up again when Meh checked on him. We consulted several friends who had gone through similar situations, but the consensus seemed to be that he needed to figure it out for himself. Sure enough, some time later (somewhat of an eternity for us), his room was quiet. I snuck in to check and he was sleeping on his tummy with his blankets in a pile around him. I rearranged them and snuck back out - he slept through the rest of the night. In the morning, Meh reported that he was sitting up in his bed talking to himself when she went him to get him.

We're hoping that the standing-and-crying-in-bed was a rare occurrence; tonight he went to bed very cozily for me, and has stayed asleep so far.