Tonight Is The First Night of the Rest of Our Life.

It's 8:51pm and right now T is sound asleep on the top bunk of his bunk beds, M is sound asleep in her daybed and H is sound asleep in his race car bed. Yes, you read that right, his race car bed, not his crib.

For the last week, I have had an ongoing conversation with just about anyone that would listen wondering when/if H should be in a bed. I've been thinking about it for some time but because he really hadn't climbed out or tried any crib-tricks on me, I thought maybe he should stay in the safe, cozy womb of children's beds, the crib.

I asked lots of people, some had their kids out of the crib as early as 18 months, others waited until age 3. Some had their kids transition to a toddler bed, others straight to a twin bed.

I, of course, was snooty and also told anyone that would listen that H would be going straight to a bed bed, not a toddler bed. That all changed when my dad's next door neighbors gave us a pretty much brand new race car bed for my car loving twenty three month old.

The plan was to wait until he turned two. (One month from today.) But then I started thinking maybe that's too soon.

Then yesterday morning as I picked up his room, he climbed IN to his crib and smiled at me, as if to say:

"I climbed in all by myself, wait until you see me climb out."

And then today, he made a habit of climbing in, screaming for me to come save him and then would climb right back in.

And the icing on the cake was when he spotted said race car bed in the garage and became obsessed. There was no way that this kid was going to go inside the house unless the 'beep beep bed' was coming too.

So the beep beep bed has moved in, and the crib was tearfully taken down. (Well maybe I should clarify that, J took it down and had no tears, I sat in the rocker saying, 'He is not a baby anymore.' over and over with tears in my eyes.)

I envisioned an interesting bedtime, but H was so thrilled with the 'beep beep bed' that he pretty much followed his bedtime routine to a 'T' and was out like a light in no time at all. Now let's all knock on wood and hope this lasts.

While I've considered H a toddler for sometime now, this bed sleeping business makes it official.

We are now the parents of two kids and a toddler.

Really, where does the time go?