Early morning adventures

So aside from being super-awesome of late, in a great mood, sleeping like a demon and potty-training like a rockstar, Maddie has learned another cool trick.

Getting out of bed, opening her door, and wandering around the house in the early-morning hours.

I remember all my anxiety leading up to the transition to her "big girl" bed - would she fall out, would she hate it, would she jump out of bed every chance she got and never sleep. And then the transition turned out to be the easiest thing in the world... and I was all like, what's with the hoopla people?

Now I get it.

She's known how to open and close doors forever. And she learned how to climb in and out of her bed fairly quickly (why did I ever praise her when she was doing this??).

And then last weekend, she put two and two together. For a while (before she got comfortable with getting out of bed on her own) she would just sit up in bed and call out for me in the morning. Then she started getting out of bed and going to her door, knocking on it, calling for me.

Either of these two was entirely acceptable ways to wake up in my opinion.

Waking up to a stealth-like-ninja-child creeping into my room silently and staring at me from the side of the bed? Not the most relaxing way to wake up.

Even less relaxing? Waking up to an open-doored, empty bedroom and having to search the upstairs for my toddler, who has been up for who knows how long? Very much not relaxing.

Am realizing, as I type this, that I sound like the most irresponsible parent in the world... I'm actually a very light sleeper and have a pretty good mom-sensor as to her wakefulness, so I'm pretty sure she's only ever been up for 5 minutes on her own at the most...


Anyhoo - I should probably note, we ALWAYS have the child-gate secured at the top of the stairs. And all the bathroom cupboards are child-locked. So the worst she can really get up to is pulling out all the towels from the linen closet, going into the baby's room to snoop around the new toys/clothes/bags strewed across the floor, or climb up on the blanket box to look out the hallway window. Pretty benign adventures.

But still a little jarring and so looking online as to what other's suggest I come across two options. Either lock (or secure) the bedroom door (i.e. using those child-proof door-knob covers), or put up a child-gate on the outside of the kids door.

Now the first option, essentially locking the child in their room, while the safest of all options, is not an option (for me). Not that I have an actual phobia about being trapped, but holy shit, that would scare the hell out of me personally and so I really don't fathom doing this to my little miss.

The second option - the baby gate outside the door - well, more humane in at least they see why they are trapped - but still... I can't help but feel like we're moving backwards a bit? And also, the baby gates we currently have from the earlier baby days are too thick to work in the door jamb with the door closed, so yeah... it means we have to go out and buy a new safety gate, just for this.

Unless there's another suggestion that I'm totally missing?

xxoo.S