Product Hits & Misses: Big Girl Bed Edition

Monday night marked an important milestone in our family.

It was the first time EVER that all of us slept on adult-size beds!

Ever since Joy first climbed out of her crib, long time since, we've been using one form of tent or another to keep her safe during night-times and rest-times. She doesn't protest the enclosure at all -- I think it makes her feel safe too -- but if it's not there, she's up and about in a flash. Won't stay still long enough to have any chance at sleep, and her bedroom is not currently safe to be up-and-about in the middle of the night. (We're having some modifications done. But still.)

I wrote about tented products in my very first Product Hits and Misses post two years ago. Crib tent from Tots-in-Mind was a huge hit, making the crib usable all the way up to age 6 and a half! Pack-n-play tent was helpful but fiddly, making overnight travel possible but it always took such a long time to set up, plus it's definitely got a size limit to it. The PeaPod Plus travel bed, which took the place of the Pack-n-Play tent, was an astonishingly fine find. Good up to age 6 depending on kid-size, this portable tent sets up in one springy motion (though you do have to pump up the little air mattress to insert in the base separately). It folds away with nearly equal ease. We've used this for both travel and out-of-home napping for two years, at daycare and now at kindergarten. Amazing product.

Less amazing was the Pacific Play Tents Secret Castle Twin Bed Tent. This product fit over a twin mattress, and we'd hoped that it might serve a containment purpose for Joy with a few modifications (for example, the front door zipper only went top-to-bottom, but the base of the door was open, so I tried to modify that with snaps.) Not only could Joy get out easily, but the tent was poorly ventilated and also wasn't well-set-up for bedding. Big miss, alas.

Well, since we did that product search two years ago, a new invention has come on the scene. May I present: the Nickel Bed Tent from Ready, Set, Bloom LLC.


This parent-invented product came about due to the needs of a youngster with autism (named Nick, hence the Nickel Bed.) It's sized for a twin mattress like the play tent I just mentioned, but unlike the play tent, with the Nickel Bed you insert the mattress INTO the tent, so you can put a full set of bedding on it. The tent has great ventilation, and zippers open on three sides: two long sides plus one end. It also comes with little carabiners for hooking the zippers together, assuming you don't want them to be unzipped from the inside.

Joy loves her new tent. She popped right in with no trouble at all, snuggled the familiar blankets, went right to sleep. Two nights now, no troubles. We've started with an air mattress, but a "real" mattress is on order and with any luck will be able to pick it up today. Rose is a little bit envious, but she got to move to her own room with a queen-size platform bed some time ago, so I think she'll deal.

The tent is proving popular enough to keep selling out. It was on back-order when we discovered it, and is now on back-order again. The inventors/proprietors of Ready, Set, Bloom have been making tweaks to improve the product with each new batch from the factory, so the tent is apparently still a work in progress. The price is good: the current iteration sells for $139.99 (I think we paid $125). Compare that to a hospital-bed type enclosure!! One thing I really appreciated was being able to follow the company on Facebook, thus getting the inside scoop on product updates and shipping updates and such.

While this product is a huge hit with us, we've also found a few things that could use improvement.

The tent is, unfortunately, a bit of a challenge to set up. The tent poles have square-cut ends that don't slide particularly easily into the tent-fabric channels. The four main poles, instead of starting out straight and bending in the process (like most tent-poles these days do), are actually curved aluminum, probably more sturdy but also a little more finicky to put together and thread through. The set-up instructions seemed to refer to a previous iteration of the product, referencing straight poles of three different lengths when actually there are two matching short straight poles and then four matching curved poles -- confusing at first!

I do believe I'm spoiled by the "spring-right-out-of-the-bag" set-up of the PeaPod Plus. I could wish for a similar set-up in a large size product! though the PeaPod has an oval footprint and requires its own custom inflatable mattress, while the Nickel Bed Tent accommodates a standard twin mattress & bedding, and therefore can fit a twin-bed frame -- it has straps at the base of the tent to fasten onto a frame if you're using one. We'll likely travel with the PeaPod for a little while yet, as long as we can, due to the differential in set-up ease. When she outgrows that, we'll have the Nickel Bed Tent and air mattress, such that overnight travel will still be possible. For that awesome benefit, we can overlook a little bit of set-up time.

The fact that the zippers are made to attach together also technically makes the Nickel Bed a form of restraint. So we couldn't spend Medicare Waiver funds on it -- though if we'd needed a hospital-ish bed, we could have accessed that funding to the tune of a couple thousand. Fascinating how things work, or don't, sometimes.

All told, Joy's new Nickel Bed is a huge step forward, and I salute the inventors for seeing the need in their own lives and making their solution available to the world as well!

Not What I Had In Mind

So this has been a sleep-deprived week at the Joy household. I wrote about the ridiculous lack of sleep over the church retreat weekend, starting with Rose waking me at 4am Saturday with a tooth that had fallen out, then 20 straight hours awake partying at the retreat, then 2 1/2 hours of sleep and not much more than dozing the rest of Saturday night...

Catching up from that big deprivation wasn't going well. Joy did a lot of night wakings this past week, of the kind in which she wakes at 2:30 or 3am and starts enjoying herself in the crib, with loud comments. Sometimes she'll snooze again at 5am, sometimes she just stays awake. And then she doesn't nap! As you can imagine, the big people have a hard time sleeping through this too.

Finally on Friday night I had a good solid 8-hour night. It would have been longer (Joy slept till we woke her at 7am, eleven hours!) but I had bell practice all morning and we needed to get a week's worth of groceries before I left.

Oh, how I was hoping for a solid night last night, to consolidate my rest and make the world right!

But Rose came to my bedside at 2:30. "My tummy doesn't feel good." I staggered out of bed, gave her some simethicone, and sent her back to her room. Ten minutes later, she was back. "I threw up all over my bed," she reported.

Aughh. Got her moved onto the couch with a barf bucket, stripped her bed, started the laundry... and woke up Joy. Who didn't go back to sleep. But that was the least of the worries.

Rose, wide awake, wanted a video. So we curled up on the couch to watch, and she then started heaving at intervals of 10 or 15 minutes. I lost count of how many trips I made to dump the bucket.

Eventually she was tired enough to sleep, thought the barfing was done, go to bed Mommy, I'll stay on the couch. So I gratefully hauled back to bed, about 4am this was. Ten minutes later, she's at my side. She'd whoopsed again, and without my help she didn't get the bucket in time. So now I have another load of laundry to do, and I'm back out to the living room. To lie down on the floor, since Rose is now using the whole couch. She was so tired she actually did nap, but the ten-minute intervals continued, with me on duty listening for the gagging since she couldn't position the bucket in her sleep.

Finally JoyDad got up after 5 sometime. I put him on bucket duty and wearily crawled away to bed. I did get to "sleep in" at that point. And the last bucket, that I dumped just as he was getting up, was (wonder of wonders!) the last retch. He didn't have to oversee a single one. Lucky, lucky dude.

Despite a few hours of morning sleep, I don't feel much rested.

This was not what I had in mind.

UPDATE: Well, just when I get a good self-indulgent whine on, I read something that makes me count my blessings. Prayers for Nik and his mama over at Maternal Instincts. They're having a rough time right now, and sleep deprivation is just part of it.

Taking the Lane

I've mentioned a couple of times that I have a rather nice bike-commute to my part-time job. It takes about 20-25 minutes each way, most of it is either bike lane or bike path, some of it is lakefront, and there are just enough inclines to make it a bit of work without being too discouraging.

The most dangerous bit is a left turn that happens near our house, crossing a busy street. Left turns can be tricky. In general, the safest way is also the scariest -- you have to leave your bike lane, merge into traffic and act like a car for a bit, blocking other cars until you've completed the turn.

This maneuver is called "taking the lane."

Now, one doesn't HAVE to take the lane. The more timid route is to come to a dead stop in your bike lane, wait for all the traffic both ways to pass, and then quickly cut across the whole street. Trouble is, there may be other bikers behind you, who may or may not want to turn themselves.

Alas, my bike commute ends for the season when the Daylight Savings switch comes around in the fall, even if the weather is still good. Once we "fall back," the left turn near our house on the way home begins to happen after sunset. And I don't play traffic games on a bicycle when dark is falling!

In past years, this is when I begin to turn into a hibernating pudding. At the time I most need the exercise (yes, I've finally realized I do have some seasonal-affective issues, on top of the holiday feastings), I lose my best regular workout. Fortunately this year, the Couch to 5K training program came along just in time. I'm midway into week 3 now, and it still feels pretty do-able. We're also getting an exercise bike to go with the treadmill. Maybe after the 5K I should train for a triathlon? Nahh, let's not get ahead of ourselves...

Anyway. These past few months I've been blogging have been an interesting "take-the-lane" time for me in other ways too. I've found myself to be more of an idea person, and being unusually forward in acting on those ideas. Things as small as -- getting in touch with the principal & PTA co-presidents to inquire whether there might be some way to get the city to do a better job of snow-removal on the sidewalks across from the elementary school, which was a real pain in the patoot during last year's record snowfalls. (My e-mail turned into a PTA board meeting agenda item; people-who-know-people inquiries are underway).

Two potentially larger things are spinning with my plates now too. Remember my dad's lovely review of beyond.words by dre.dance? Suddenly I got the itch to try & bring the production to my city! I've been in touch with the director, and the booking agent, and some contacts both in the arts & autism community around here... it may or may not happen, particularly in this economic climate, but wouldn't it be too cool?

Second, I've been taking some steps on my idea of creating an online information source and support group for linear nevus sebaceous syndrome, something that is sorely lacking on the web right now. I've got a potential partner lined up for maybe providing the domain & web hosting, and I've collected a bunch of information from the medical library -- working on a draft of the site, in all that free time of mine.

Lots of "taking the lane" going on, even with the bike commute over for the year! Now that I've told you all this, it gives me extra accountability to keep moving on these projects. I'll let you know.

---------

And in further updates: we're doing better on the sleep front, helped by melatonin, nap management, a white noise machine, and we're now waiting/weighting on the weighted blanket to arrive by mail. Maybe the dimmer switch is moving in the right direction too. We can hope.

And yes, we made two months seizure free! Woo-hoo! Neurologist appointment later this morning (I really must go get ready for the day)... we'll see what that conversation brings.

Getting Giggles, Take 2

Way back in August I posted how Joy had a reputation at daycare for getting giggles.

We've just found a new context, with a zombie-parents twist.

Joy's difficulties in getting to sleep are continuing, particularly at home. She is managing to nap some at daycare, whether due to peer pressure or her Peapod Plus travel bed or her borrowed weighted blanket (top priority for this week - chasing down our OT to give a weight-recommendation so we can obtain such a blanket for home too).

I almost thought I was seeing a pattern where the few nights she was sleeping through were happening after those daycare naps. That pattern broke with a crash on Friday night, though, after a deep 2-hour daycare nap. That night she almost didn't let the melatonin put her to sleep at bedtime, then woke up at 12:30. I thought I'd try something different, and took her to attempt co-sleeping in the guestroom. She didn't do more than drowse the rest of the night (though at least she was fairly quiet), and I didn't want to take her back to the crib to hoot & holler until JoyDad was up for the day, because that would killed the rest of the night for BOTH of us.

Anyway. We decided to try cutting out naps altogether for the weekend. Not that she'd been actually napping at home for quite a while, but at least we'd been putting her in the tented crib for "quiet time" for a chunk of the afternoon.

Saturday, after playing outside in fallen leaves instead of napping, Joy got very snoozly and almost fell asleep on the floor in the late afternoon, but perked up some after dinner. Then as bedtime approached, she started getting giggly. Wild, over-the-top giggles. At first it made us laugh too, until it was clear that quiet lullabies and rocking and even the melatonin weren't causing the giggles to stop. So we just put her to bed, where she giggled and thrashed for about 5 minutes before crashing into sleep.

Slept all night, it was very very nice!

Tried it again on Sunday. I realized that I'd heard those giggles recently before. They had happened when she'd awakened at 2:30 or 3am on previous nights, and had been vocalizing for 2 or 3 hours -- the vocalizations would change to those wild giggles. Overtired, perhaps?

Joy's church volunteers reported that she was quiet, tired, low-energy all evening. It wasn't until we got her home and started getting ready for bed... that the wild giggles began again.

This time they didn't stop when she went into the crib. It took something like an hour and a half to crazy-giggle herself to sleep, which wound her parents up enough to push their sleep even later than that. But at least she slept through, which was something.

The saga continues! Tee hee hee hee! MuuuuAH-HA-HA-HA! Zzzzzzzz....

Zombie Parents

JoyDad and I are going to be zombies again today.

No, we aren't seeking braaaaaains. (Well, OK, maybe we need those too.)

Our desperate zombie-moan sounds more like "SLEEEEEEEEEP!"

I referred to sleep-deprivation playing a role in the run-up to Women's Retreat this past weekend.

Here's the deal. Over the past couple of weeks, Joy has been fighting going to sleep. The way she does it is through stimming, both physically and vocally. Loud vocals. Hoots and yelps and giggles. Did I mention LOUD?

It started with just naptime, which is not that surprising because lots of 4-year-olds are ready to give up naps. But then it transferred to bedtime in the evening too, and also to wake-ups in the wee small hours. She can keep it up for hours on end. And when she's doing that loud vocal stimmy stuff, her parents don't sleep.

We have been able to manage the bedtimes using melatonin. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to affect the 2:30 or 3:00 am wakings. We just asked her doctor for the OK to bump up the dose Monday night, and she did sleep through Monday night. Last night, though, she started up at 3:30am. Of course we'd been up to see the election returns and the acceptance speech... I got up, gave her some Benadryl, rocked her till 4am, then put her back in the crib still awake. I think she might have dozed a bit, but then started in again.

Therefore, JoyDad and I have basically been up since 3:30am. Again. With headaches, and fighting our colds.

At least Rose sleeps through it all, though I have no idea how, because they share a room!

My hunch is that this will eventually be like the whole biting thing, and the dimmer switch will eventually slide back the other direction.

Till then, though, this is taking a pretty big toll.

Ideas welcome! Thank you in advance for any input...

And in regards to the events that kept us up watching the TV, I'd like to close with a line from a pre-election prayer that came around by e-mail, from the Mennonite Church USA Peace and Justice Support Network.

We pray that all candidates, both those who are elected and those who are not, will seek Your justice and Your peace in the world.

Peace.

Church-Ladies in the Wild Woods

Or is that wild church-ladies in the woods?

Every year at about this time, the women of my congregation take a much-needed getaway: Women's Retreat. We go out to a retreat center north of here, and from Saturday morning to Sunday noon we hike, talk, reflect, do handwork, worship, sing, and enjoy one another's company and the break from the day-to-day.

Last year Joy came down with a 24-hour tummy-bug, not a week before the retreat. I was up all night holding her as she retched. "I mustn't catch this," I told myself sternly. "I want to go to women's retreat!"

Then a day or two later, Rose caught the bug. Again I was up all night with her, positioning the bucket at 45-minute intervals. "I won't catch this," I promised myself. "I'm going to go to women's retreat!"

Friday came around and I packed up my things for the next morning's departure, still feeling fine. And then...

JoyDad started feeling rumbly in the tummy.

Hadn't even thought of that! But there went the daughter-care for the weekend. I stayed home and took care of the girls (and him, though he didn't let me hold the bucket) while he retched, and missed the retreat. And then, insult to injury, came down with a mild version of the bug myself the following Monday.

This year? I'm fighting a cold, and so is JoyDad. Plus, Joy has discovered how to keep herself from falling asleep, for hours at a time. She stims on her blankets or stuffed animals, and vocalizes loudly. This applies to nap, to bedtime, and lately to wake-ups in the middle of the night too. Rose sleeps through it, but JoyDad and I are missing big chunks of sleep (as we try to fight our colds).

I'm still planning to go to women's retreat, though! The theme this year is "The Power to Lift Up." I'm expecting a beautiful, uplifting time -- our pastor (yes, a woman) always does such a lovely Sunday-morning worship at retreat, and the setting is idyllic, and the company is fantastic. And the craft project is related to the uplifting theme as well...

Wild church-ladies in the northwoods. Can't wait. Think good "sleepy-Joy" and "cold-B-gone" thoughts for us.

Pumpkin photos when I get back!

Product Hits & Misses

I'm figuring on doing "Product Hits & Misses" as an occasional feature here, highlighting goodies that have worked well -- and not so well -- for Joy.

But first, a big vacation hit! We just got back from a long weekend in the north woods, at a small rustic lakefront cabin without running water or electricity, but with peace and beauty a-plenty. Joy particularly liked hanging out on the pier, so we did a lot of that. Photo credit to JoyDad:

Now, about the products. We had a new goodie this trip that made life much easier: the KidCo Peapod Plus travel bed.


Joy started climbing out of her crib at an early age. She still won't sleep anywhere that she's not contained; a "big girl bed" is currently out of the question. However, we did manage to make continued use of the crib with a Tots In Mind Cozy Crib Tent:

The tent velcroes around the top rail of the crib, and then the front panel zips down to get your kiddo in and out. It worked so well that we got a similar tent for the Pack-n-Play portable crib that Joy slept in at daycare! We then used a Pack-n-Play with the tent when we went on vacation.

The tent works best on the crib, because you don't have to keep taking it down. The one that goes on the Pack-n-Play has 10 separate tent-pole pieces, and something like 12 clips to attach it to the playpen. It's been a pain in the patoot to assemble and disassemble every time we travel, but at least it was working -- but Joy was growing, and the Pack-n-Play was ceasing to be safe.

Enter the PeaPod. Compared to the Pack-n-Play tent, it's a marvel of engineering. You open the carrying case, and the PeaPod snaps all the way open. Kapow, no rods to assemble, no clips to clip. It does have a thin air mattress that you have to inflate with the small hand-pump that comes with the package, and then you insert the mattress into a zippered compartment at the base of the Peapod. The sides are nicely ventilated, and it comes with a little sleeping bag too. Really nicely designed.

Joy slept lovely full nights up at the lake in her PeaPod. She's also been napping in it at daycare. It's supposed to be good up to age six, so we may get two years out of it, until she realizes that she can zip the panel open herself...

Our product "miss" for attempting the same purpose was a Secret Castle Bed Tent, a tent that fits over a twin mattress like a fitted sheet. We thought that might be a nice way to transition to a big-girl bed.

Cute, huh? Alas, the bed tent didn't have a zipper at the bottom of the flaps, so Joy could crawl right out. Also, when the front flaps are down, there's not enough ventilation and the thing becomes a sweatbox. I tried to fix things by sewing snaps to hold the flaps down, and cut a comforter to fit inside because otherwise she'd be sleeping on tent nylon. Joy simply popped the snaps and refused to nap.

So we gave the bed-tent to older sister Rose for a play toy. At least it's good for something.