Evil Genius Attacks, Parents Tired

As you may have guessed by the title, we had a bit of an opportunity overnight last night to find out just how far Zac has come in the short few weeks since he turned two. Let's recap, shall we? While this month has seen a suddenly much larger vocabulary, it has also come with a new attitude, full of ignoring the two of us and generally getting into anything and everything and ignoring discipline at every turn. The pictures I'm enclosing in the post tonight show both door knob solutions Zac figured out as well as our final solution to the problem described below.

Then we have the past few days. As Zac has been under the weather for the past week, he has certainly not been as positive or willing to be pleasant, to be sure. While that has been a challenge, we didn't expect to be met with several tougher ones at the same time. Thursday night around 11:30 we heard a loud thud followed by an extremely loud radio. Katy walked in to find Zac had climbed out of his crib, which had very high sides. After battling with him for quite some time, we eventually coaxed him into staying in his crib for awhile until he woke up again around 3. Eventually, he tired enough to finish sleeping through the night.

Friday, we decided to take his mattress out and place it on the floor since he was unlikely to stay in his crib anyway. I moved the radio to the back of his dresser and figured we were safe for awhile at least. I was wrong. When I placed Zac down for his nap Friday afternoon, it wasn't long before I again heard an extremely loud radio. I walked in to find him standing on the bottom drawer of his dresser, playing with the radio. With no safe place to keep the radio (his TV, which we used to have in there for music had been tossed on the floor on Thursday), I chose to remove it from his room. To this point Zac was not a problem when we closed his bedroom door as the safety cover on his side of the door was enough to keep him from getting out.

Then we had Saturday night. At 3:30, Katy and I heard what sounded like a door, loud enough that it woke us up. While I drifted fairly quickly back to sleep (knowing Katy had gotten up), I was awake long enough to hear her ask Zac where he was going. Turns out he'd figured out how to open his door, safety cover and all, and was on his way downstairs when she caught him. Zac isn't perfect on stairs yet, and we never let him downstairs in our house, so this could've been a bad thing. After putting him back to bed only to be re-awakened to him trying to get out, it was around 4:30 that I was aware again he'd left his room. Taking him back inside, I let him show me how he'd opened the door.

Trust me that at 4:30 in the morning, with already interrupted sleep, this is not a problem you want to have. The only solution we could come up with was to put his baby gate in the door jamb to keep his door from closing (he has always slept with his door closed). To keep him from trying to toss the door into the gate and breaking the door, I rigged some twine in what turned out to be a failed attempt to keep it still. This did, however, keep him in his room the rest of the night, though Katy couldn't sleep, and I barely did, as he stayed mostly awake and tossed things to and fro. He also spent some time banging the door and later throwing a ball into our door, which was the last straw for my sleeping so at 7:30 I literally stumbled out of bed to tend to our little juvenile delinquent.

We spent much of today trying to determine how we'd keep Zac from leaving his room at night. I bought an entirely different type of door knob cover, which he immediately looked at, sized up and figured out how to work. Fortunately I kept the receipt so those are going back. The next idea we'd had was to exchange the door knob assembly from our room with his, as ours has a lock. Placing the lock on the outside, we figured then we could simply lock him in his room at night. It seemed an alright idea until we placed him down for a nap this afternoon and he quickly showed his displeasure at not being able to open the door. We realized that having our son bang on his door all night would effectively end our ability to sleep.

So we moved to Plan C...or D...or is it E? Whatever it is, the final solution was to give in and purchase a baby gate that is installed with hardware, rather than the pressure-sensitive one we already have. He can knock down the other one whenever he wants, so installing it into the door frame was our only option despite the fact we have our house up for sale at the moment. This gate swings open and has a latch system he cannot work or figure out how to do just yet, which should buy us a fair amount of time. It's also of a design which will keep him from being able to climb over. To assure ourselves peace and quiet, or as much as we can hope for, we're also leaving him only soft toys and stuffed animals in his room. His crib has now been dismantled and his new twin bed has been ordered, so soon we'll step into the next phase of the bedroom saga. We've also started locking other doors from the inside, since our setup allows us to unlock them from the outside using a thin screwdriver. Let's hope it gets easier from here!