My family and I are moving home soon.
Lately I’ve been sorting through all of our bits and figuring out what to bring and what to ditch.
The one piece of furniture that I’m stuck on is my daughter’s cot.
My daughter is 17-months-old and will be closer to two by the time we change homes.
When I searched online to see when other parents transferred their toddlers to beds she fell into the average age group, but every child is different.
My biggest concern of course is that she’ll never stay in bed at night.
She’s not a fan of being contained. Trying to strap her into a car seat or pram is a nightmare.
Most nights she’ll snuggle down in her cot with her bottle and drift off to sleep but some nights it’s like wrestling a tiny demon.
If the bars weren’t there I know she’d be out of the room and down the stairs like a shot.
On the other hand she’s very tall for her age and I’ve found her several times with her leg over the top of the cot.
This makes me feel like I should transfer her to a bed with a rail because I’m afraid she could seriously hurt herself if she fell.
Whatever I decide there are pros and cons.
So here I am staring at my baby cage not knowing what to do with it once the moving van arrives. Should it stay or should it go?
I feel like in my heart of hearts I’ll let it go. It’s served both of my children well but I think it’s time has come. It’s time to say goodbye.
I think part of the reason why this caused me so much humming and hawing is because it’s different than the last time around.
When my son grew too big for his cot we packed it away for the next baby, but now there’s no one to pack it away for. Once my daughter out grows her baby things they’ll be gone for good. The baby stage won’t be entering our house again.
It’s a bitter sweet feeling packing away the tiny hats and baby grows and knowing I’ll never need to use them again. There’ll be no more learning to crawl or baby’s first word in our home again.
But there will be lots of other firsts, some milestones I know are coming and some that will be a surprise.
The bitter sweet moments never truly end in parenthood, your children are always moving on to new stages. All you can do is be as involved as you can in all of them.
