Quickie: cribs are overrated

The heat is out in our house... again. I know what you're thinking: "Don't you people ever check your fuel oil levels?"

The short answer is, obviously, not as often as we need to. I've mentioned before that it's a truly antiquated system. You literally slide an oversized measuring stick into a pipe that pops up out of the ground in our front yard and pull it out to see how many inches of oil are in our 2,000-gallon tank. It's just like checking the oil dipstick at JiffyLube, but more annoying since the task is left to moi (or David) and it's freaking cold outside right now (and there is a foot of snow on the ground... and it's hard to get out there when you have a 19-month-old... and I could go on and on with excuses). If we could afford to fill the tank (2,000 gallons at $2.10 a gallon = $4,200 = HA HA HA), this wouldn't be an issue.

Anyway, the reason for this explanation is that because we have no heat right now, I had to let myself into Noah's room today during his nap to plug in a space heater. I didn't want to put him down to sleep with the heater in sight; I knew it would be a magnet for his little hands and his ultra-curious personality.

So I waited until he'd been quiet for a good 30 minutes, and I slipped into his room. What I saw made me so glad I'd waited:


He was not IN his bed... he was beside it, all curled up in my rocking chair with his giant stuffed frog and a blankie. As you can see, it's become very easy for him to fling himself up and out of the crib and into the adjacent chair. Unfortunately because of the room layout, it's not something I can change.

I almost left him in the chair, because he was so very peaceful there. But then I thought about him rolling over (which he does often) and onto the floor, in the same space where I was plotting to rest an electrical heating element. Maybe not a good match.

So after snapping one more picture, I picked him up, rocked his startled self for a minute or two, and put him down gently in his crib. Twenty minutes later, I finally plugged in the space heater while my sleeping toddler caught some zzz's in the comfort of his bed.


Such a cute little man...