He's a big boy now!

Yesterday, we finally moved Max out of his toddler bed and into his "big boy" twin sized bed.

We spent the better part of the afternoon moving things around in his room, and finally moving the big bed from the storage room into his room.

I've never seen him so excited!

He was running around in circles, dancing back and forth.....



The thing is, this bed is much higher than his short little toddler bed. (Seriously, this bed is huge. It's a captains pedestal with two sets of drawers)
I never worried about him falling out of the toddler bed because it was so close to the floor. In fact, many times I would go into his room to check on him, only to find him sleeping in the middle of his floor on top of a pile of blankets and stuffed animals.

I told him he would probably need a railing for the side of the bed, so he wouldn't fall out.

DH wasn't completely convinced that we needed the railing, until I pointed out that the $20.00 for the railing would cost less than the co-pay for the ER if he fell out and got hurt.

We had a late dinner, so at 9:00 I was ready to go buy the railing. I decided to take Brielle and Aaron with me and as we were walking out the door Max started to follow.
"No Max, you can't come with us this time."
"But I want to come with you! We need to buy my railing."
"No, it's too late for you to be out buddy, you need to stay home and get ready for bed."
Then Max says:

"I CAN'T GO TO BED NOW! I DON'T HAVE A RAILING ON MY BED AND I WILL FALL OF AND BUST MY HEAD!
AND I DON'T HAVE A VERY STRONG HEAD!!"

I explained to him that he didn't actually need to go to bed, but just put his pajamas on and be ready to go to bed.

So the three of us got in the car and headed to the Mart of Wal.

When we were nearly there, we noticed fireworks in the sky. We automatically assumed that they were in celebration of Bagsalody Day.

When we got in the store, we got our mandatory shopping cart with the squeaky wheel that causes everyone to stare at us and mock us as we're walking by, and headed back to find the railing. We looked through the isle with the cribs and toddler beds and finally found a bed railing.

For $32.00.

I knew I had seen one there for $20 the last time I looked.
I finally found the place where the less expensive railings had been. They were all gone.

Stupid Wal Mart.

As much as I love Max, I wasn't about to spend $32 when I knew I could get one for $20.

I started banging my head against the stupid shelf. I DID NOT want to drive to another Wal Mart. I whined for a while, looked around the aisle a bit more, then back on the shelf (you know, in case one of the cheaper railings just materialized out of nowhere while I had my back turned) then decided to leave and make the trek across town to the other Wal Mart.

For some reason, as we were leaving we walked down a different aisle and lo and behold, what was sitting there right in the middle of the shelf, surrounded by items that were completely unrelated to bed railings?

One box containing the last $20 bed rail.

I might have done the happy dance right there in the middle of Wal Mart. (my kids just love it when I do the happy dance in public) (they really do)

When we got home, Max was in his pajamas and exceedingly excited about the new bed rail.
We sat down on his bedroom floor and opened the box. The outside said that there was some assembly required, but that no tools were needed to assemble the rail.

I tried to dump the parts out on the floor, but they were wedged inside the box so tightly that it took two of us to pry them out of there.
I pulled apart all of the plastic bags then read the instructions. The first line said (and I kid you not)
"Sit down, and take a deep breath."

So we all sat down and took a deep breath.

Then the instructions said not to be overwhelmed and assured us that the assembly would be easier than it looked.

The instructions were numbered and I followed each one exactly, until I got to the part where we had to assemble the lower rail. I put it together, and it promptly fell apart.
I tried it again. It fell apart again.
I even tried to take another deep breath, but it still fell apart.

I was beginning to wonder if I should have shelled out the extra twelve dollars for the other railing. I think it came assembled.

The instructions didn't even any diagrams to follow, so we just threw out the directions and tried to make it look like the picture on the box, and guess what?
I got it together the first time!

As it turns out, those directions left out a whole, crucial step in assembling the railing.

Stupid instructions.

I have to wonder if the person writing these instructions was about to quit their job the next day and really wanted to cause a problem for the company who manufactures them.
Or they are a practical jokester, and giggled the whole time they were writing the instructions, knowing the frustration that it would cause parents.
Or, whoever was translating the the directions from the language they were originally written in, got distracted and completely missed step 5.

Either way, we finally got the railing put together, and Max got to sleep in his big boy bed. I checked on him a few times after he fell asleep and guess where he was?

Laying right next to the wall, as far away from the rail as possible.