Seth's Bed

Seth slept in a Pack N Play for the first year of his life. Once he started to become aware that it was more like a cage then a bed, we had to take him out of it. He would grab the side and push and pull and he was starting to break it. We went to DI and bought a crib mattress, but no crib. We laid the mattress on the floor with not frame. Seth loved it. We had to teach him to stay in bed, but he got it after a while. A crib might have been easier, but I did not feel that we had room in our apartment. He still sometimes gets out of bed when he should be sleeping. We usually have to put him in bed four or five times each night. The same week that we bought the crib mattress from DI, Jennifer found a crib mattress in the dumpster of our apartment complex. It was in perfect shape, so she took it out and disinfected it. We just stacked one on top of the other and Seth has slept on both.

When Amy Jo lived in Cedar, she gave us a bunch of stuff for Seth (clothes, toys, a booster seat). She is ready to put Dallan in a crib, but she has misplaced the mattress. She called and asked if I still had two. I told her that she could have one of mine. We will be going to Richfield November 6th for my niece's (Avery) baptism. I got a little excited and started to prepare to take it today. I checked to see that it will fit in the trunk. It fits fine. I thought about leaving it there, but decided that Jennifer would not like that. She would not have a trunk for 4 weeks and I would get in trouble. It worked nice for Seth to have both mattresses stacked under the window, since he likes to watch for the garbage truck and likes to wave to me when I come home from work. With only one mattress, he is not tall enough to see out the window. I had some old 2X4's laying on the back porch and the top off of an old computer desk that was the same size as Seth's bed. I cut the 2X4's into four inch pieces and nailed them together in an L shape. I laid the L's on their sides and nailed one to each corner of the desk top. Seth's mattress fits perfectly on top of it. It makes his bed just as high as it was before. Now he can see out the window again. I found out that Seth is a good little helper. He loved handing me nails. He carried the container of nails across the room and then brought me one as I called out "Nail." The only problem was that he brought them one at a time. I had to call "Nail" just as I started to pound the one that he just brought me.

Seth had fun working on this project with his Dad. Now he is even more excited about his bed. May be now he will go down for a nap on the first try.