I Dodged a Bullet! Crap.

This morning I was laying in bed at 7:45, mentally planning my post in my head. It went something like this:

For those of you who don't know, we've had some drama around my house lately. It all started with potty training 3 months ago. Actually, the potty training part was a breeze. Daphne did it in about a week and pretty much never looked back. But about a month ago, she wet the bed 4 times in a 24 hour period--at 5am, at 8am, during her nap, and the next morning at 7am. And I'm pretty sure she was awake, just unable to get out of her crib to go potty. So I decided it was time to put her in a toddler bed so she could get up to go potty. So I took off the front rail of her crib and attached the toddler rail. The first week went great. She stayed in her bed, kept her normal sleeping hours, took her naps, and stopped wetting the bed. Yeah! But then all hell broke lose. Daphne suddenly realized just what freedom this arrangement gave her. And she started getting up at all hours of the night, opening and closing doors upstairs, waking up the baby, running around, shouting from the top of the stairs, making strange requests of us like "read me a book" or "I want some cheese" or "I want to pet a T-rex". She also started skipping 4 out of 5 naps. And waking up between 6-7am instead of 8:30-9:00am. Then yesterday night, after a knock-down drag-out fight at 2am about whether or not she needed to poopy, involving kicking, biting, growling and screaming (all from me), I had had enough. Something had to change. Big Daddy and I discussed all options at length. They included: locking her door (she can open it) locking it from the outside, putting her crib front back on, putting a gate in front of her door, putting a gate across the hallway so she could only have access to her room and the bathroom, and selling her on the black market. But almost all options meant denying her access to the bathroom, which was the whole reason I put her in a bed in the first place. So I decided to call my therapist sister and asked for her advice. She has six kids, so I figured she'd know what to do. And her suggestion was to put her in a pull up and put her back in the crib. Clearly she wasn't ready for this much freedom. It was creating absolute havoc around our house. I had to agree. We'd all been missing sleep, especially her (up to 4 hours less a day including nap time!). We were all frustrated and tired. So last night I put the crib back together. I was worried that she'd freak out, but to my surprise, she only did a double take when she went to get in, and that was all. She went to bed w/o a fuss, slept through the entire night, and except for waking at 7:45 to go potty, it was a total success. I even put her back in her bed with some books after she went potty so I could doze until the baby woke up. Success! Thanks, Jennie!

That's about where my mental blog post trailed off as I fell asleep. Flash forward to 8:05am. Daphne came waltzing into my bedroom with "Mommy, read me Clifford!" Now it was my turn for a double take. How the heck? Big Daddy came walking in after her, momentarily relieving my panic. Until he looked at me wide-eyed and said, "I didn't get her out of bed." What?? So, it looks like my well-laid plan didn't go off quite without a hitch. Although she never ever got out of her crib before we moved her out of it, evidently now she can. And will. So I will take the next 24 hours and observe. Will she stay in her crib during her nap today? Will she actually sleep? And will she stay in her bed tonight now that she has jumped ship once? Does it prove enough of a challenge that the sleepy-middle-of-the-night Daphne won't try to climb out? Or will we be forced to move on to the crib tent? Or--I might just skip all that wondering and move back to option B: The black market.