[MQAAord]

Oh, those first few nights are brutal.

Our older boy was a bit distressed by the lack of his crib the first night, and tried to curl up on the floor next to his CD player after an hour. I moved the CD player to the head of the bed (there's a shelf there) and he crawled up to be next to the CD player and was asleep in 10 minutes. Never had a problem since.

Our younger boy we just put in a toddler bed about 6 weeks ago. It's a minature version of his big brother's bed. Big brother has the twin size race car bed, and little brother got the smaller crib matress size race car bed. So he knew what it was, and what it was for. We put a gate at the door, so he couldn't escape, but it took several nights of him coming to the door and us having to put him back in bed to get him to stay there.

For us, the key was silence. When I put him to bed, I told him it was night-night time and was to stay in his bed and go to sleep. I told him if he got out of bed and I had to put him back that I wasn't going to talk to him or play, I would just silently put him back in bed and leave. So that's what I did. Over and over and over and over again, but eventually he "got it". He does wake in the night and holler, but he was doing that in the crib too. Very annoying. I go in his room, silently put him back in bed and leave. I'm anxiously awaiting the passing of this stage. If he wasn't so damn LOUD, and the fact that he won't give up if I don't go put him back, I'd just leave him be. But his brother's room is right across the hall, and with his volume & persistance he'd wake up the whole damn house if I let him.

Keep at it! He'll figure it out!