BUSTED!!

I caught you!

The other afternoon, Josh climbed out of his crib EIGHT times before he finally fell asleep. Luckily, no body parts were injured during this monkey business, but we realized we had come to the end of relying on the glorious confinement known as the crib.

The next night, we introduced Josh to his new big boy bedroom. I played it up all day, telling him all about how cool it was to sleep in a big bed. He was excited and kept calling it his "Good Boy Room." We had been hiding the room from him all week while we completed the finishing touches, so when we called him into the room he was very surprised. He wanted to play with all the cars on display in the room and see all the pictures on each license plate up close. He was so cute looking at his new sheets with pure delight. I don't think he knew what he was in for! He kept saying, " I see cars, I see cars!"

We were sure to get him nice and tired before bedtime. Thanks to an action-packed two hour dinner at Chick 'n Play (aka: Chick Fil A) with Kay Kay, he was ready for some serious shut-eye. We put him down at 8:30pm and after two escapes from the room and who knows how many from the bed, he was asleep by 9:30pm. We had a monitor on in his room, so we could hear him turning the bedside light on and off, on and off, on and off. And we could hear him as he climbed the other bed to take things off the display ledges. We could also hear him pointing out the red bird on the Ohio license plate. It was quite entertaining and we found no need to watch the movie we had intended to watch that evening.

He slept until 7:30am. I thought the first night in his bed went very well. I was so proud of him and very optimistic (which is unusual for me) about this new change. That is, until "nap time" this afternoon. Notice I wrote "nap time" in quotes. After spending 1.5 hours putting Josh back in his room 5 times, laying down with him, reading him countless books, singing Ittsy Bitsy Spider 514 times, and threatening mean things, he was finally quiet... for about 10 minutes. That is when I heard a loud and very unnerving crash through the monitor. Oh dear. I must investigate. This is what I found...

Busted, yet again. Here let me zoom in for you...

Please note the following...

1. Lamp squished between bed and table, unplugged from the wall. Yikes!
2. Package of Wipes emptied all over the floor.

3. Books all over the floor.

4. Picture frame down


What you can't see...

5. Sound machine turned up to the MAX volume to create a washing machine effect.
6. Two big toy buckets thrown all over the ground, with all their contents. Josh was standing in one of the empty buckets.
7. Diapers taken out of their basket and placed neatly on a book shelf (at least they were placed neatly).
8. All of his cars hiding under his bed covers.


So, he never took a nap. It is now 5:15 and guess who just fell asleep in Daddy's arms????

Poor kid. I don't like change either, Josh.

The Room.

BEFORE

Josh took over your room, Aunt Pickles!

Don't worry, there will ALWAYS be a room for you at our house.

AFTER
For obvious reasons, we chose a "car" theme for Josh's big boy room. I won the aluminium street signs on Ebay! I found images of every state's license plate on google image and printed them out on cardstock to create the border that goes around the entire room. Cheap and cute- gotta love that! The bedding is from Target, of course. I tried to go age neutral on the bedspreads so they can be used for a while. The sheets have cars, trucks, and school buses on them and came with car shaped pillows and a cute lamp that I painted red to match the room.

I found these unfinished wood ledges at Hobby Lobby and painted them red. They were only $5 each compared to the pre-finished ones that were $40 each! Score! I repainted the letters that were in his nursery (and ditched the "UA " of Joshua, big boys can have nicknames). The cool retro car picture frame is from Hobby Lobby ($5 clearance since the back was broken, but a easy fix- no problem!). Also, in this picture you can kind of see the car-themed string of lights that are hanging from the curtain rod. I don't know if I will ever actually turn them on, since Josh will probably never let me turn them off. But, he doesn't know the difference and loves the cars.

I was so excited to find these unfinished wood display boxes at Micheal's. They are perfect to display these cool cars I found at the grocery store of all places! I painted them navy to match the letters of his name. Of course, Josh has already found a way to climb on several pieces of furniture to play with them, but I'm okay with that. How mean would I be if I didn't let him play with these cars? There doors even open!

So, that is my tour through his new room! I can't believe how big he looks in his new bed. I was sad to close the door to the nursery, but hopefully we will be blessed to revisit it again. For now, this is the next big step for our little man.