Ready, set, jump!

Sam never was one to climb out of his crib. We tried to move him to a big bed when he was 2 but he wasn't ready and really there wasn't any real reason for him to move (other than the fact that we needed the crib for Claire!)since he had no desire to ever get out of the crib. Claire, on the other hand is a bit different. The other night I was up with her in the wee morning hours, again, and I tried everything I could to console her. She wanted nothing to do with being rocked, wouldn't let me sit on the couch with her in the gameroom and finally let me hold her like a baby and rock her while I walked around the room. This is fine when your child is a couple of weeks old but when they are 21 months it gets hard on the arms pretty quickly. So after 10 minutes or so I decided to take her back into her room and try to lay her down in her crib. She was hysterical of course so I tried to lay down next to the crib so that she could see it was time to go to sleep. This only made it worse. She jumped up and down screaming for several minutes while I quietly ignored her in hopes that she would eventually calm down and lay back down. How wrong I was! After a couple of minutes I heard a thud and realized that she was laying next to me. She had fallen out of the crib! I don't think my body has ever shook so hard. I grabbed her instantly and ran to turn the light on, screaming the whole time. Bill had turned the monitor down in our room so that he and Sam, who had already come into our room, could sleep. I knew I was on my own. We sat down and rocked and I could quickly see that miraculously Claire was okay. She calmed down quickly and just let me hold her. After awhile I tried to lay down with her in Sam's bed but that didn't end up working out so after an hour of keeping a close eye on her to make sure she didn't have serious damage from her fall I decided to put her back in her crib. She cried for a couple of minutes but quickly became quiet and started reading books. I went downstairs and surfed the internet for about 20 minutes to make sure that she wasn't going to throw a fit again and fall out of the crib. My theory was that she jumped high enough that she ended up getting caught on the crib rail and then tumbled over. However, last night she proved me wrong. She once again had one of her crying fits in the middle of the night and rather than getting her out of the crib I left her there and just stood next to her to calm her down. Eventually, exhaustion got the better of me, this was 2:00 AM afterall, and I decided to lay down next to the crib but she very clearly let me know that this was not acceptable so I went to sit in the glider instead. She started jumping and screaming and then to my amazement she started to try to climb out of the crib. I told her "no" and she would stop. Then she'd do it again and I'd tell her "no" again. This went on for several minutes and eventually she calmed down and sat down with her books to read at which point I decided my services were no longer needed so I left. It was about 3:00 AM by this point and when I got back in bed Bill was awake, probably from all of the screaming. I can't believe Sam can sleep through it but am thankful that he can. Anyway, Bill went and watched tv for awhile and said this morning that Claire probably didn't fall asleep until 4. I gave him strict insructions that if he could hear her jumping in her crib that he was to run upstairs as fast as he could to catch her as she fell out. How lucky we were that she escaped one fall unharmed and now I just pray that she doesn't do it again. It appears that a big girl bed may be in our near future but that is something I am really not looking forward to. I guess only time will tell.