For a long, long time, Genevieve has insisted on being cinched very tightly into her bed: she would only fall asleep under a specific, very heavy quilt that had been snugly tucked under her mattress on both sides and pulled up almost to her ears. She has wanted this cocoon for well more than a year now, probably ever since the worst of the Bedtime Wars ended. I understood that her requests (or demands) to make the quilt “more tighter” were some sort of deeply-rooted means to make herself feel secure enough to fall asleep, but I didn’t like having to return four or six times to get the quilt exactly right, so I occasionally asked her if she was big enough to not have the quilt tucked in so tightly. The answer was always no.
And then on Saturday night, as she got ready to climb into bed, she looked me right in the eye and said, “Daddy, tonight I want da bwanket woose on the outside, not tucked in more tighter.” You could’ve knocked me over with a feather, but sure enough, she was fine with the quilt being “loose” – that is, what every other person in the universe thinks of as normal – on one side of the bed (the side that doesn’t have the crib rail still installed – a whole ‘nother situation). And she’s kept this trend up! She’s proud of herself for making this step up to big-kidness, and I’m glad I’m not scraping the skin off my knuckles as I jam the quilt edge further and further under the mattress. Next up: taking down the vestigial crib rail!