Dawn of the bed

Waterloo, The Alamo and that bit of land the 300 Spartans were rather attached to. To this patchy list of memorable battle grounds must be added the name Polegate where, only last week, a significant victory over a formidable and determined adversary was clinched. We got Dylan to sleep in his ‘big boy bed’. Oh yes!

We introduced it to his room a few weeks ago so he could get used to it. Our logic was that suddenly swapping them would have the same effect of plonking a pet carrier down in front of a timid cat.

He accepted its presence and even climbed onto it. Well, he did during daylight hours anyway. Every attempt at getting him to kip in it prior to that weekend, though, had ended in a scene reminiscent of The Exorcist. Mercifully, there was no ballistic pea soup or back-to-front heads, but I can’t swear that he didn’t levitate.

To be honest, the achievement was driven by necessity. Xander is getting big – he’s on course to be 20lb at 20 weeks – and was filling his crib. The lad is, as they say, a unit. He needed Dylan’s ‘old’ bed.

The move had to happen so a band aid approach was called for. As in the sticking plaster, not a benefit concert, fun though that would have undoubtedly been.

While I got vomited on by Xander and distracted Dylan with enough kids’ TV that I nearly threw up too, Kate dismantled the cot bed and moved the new one into its place like a ninja. We then showed laddo his room, pointing out that he now had space for his train set. To our amazement, he accepted it and, soon afterwards, was having an afternoon nap. Result.

So there you go, conclusive proof that I should do things like this half cut. Both boys in new beds and fewer tantrums than expected. No mean feat, given the resistance we’ve experienced to some pretty small changes. Now we just need to persuade Dylan that his duvet isn’t evil…