Cooper's Bed

Tonight was a big night for Cooper. I was getting him ready for his bath and he has a little bit of a runny nose. I put him in his crib so I could go in the other room and get his nose sucker. No sooner did I set him down than he grabbed the side of his crib and pulled himself up into a standing position! Now, he has been close to doing this for a week or so but he acted like he had done this a million times. He just grinned at me and kept sitting down so he could pull himself back up again. I grabbed my phone quick and got this video. Then the fun part of the evening started. I had asked David last week to come help me lower the crib. If any of you have put together a crib you know it is a lot easier with 2 people. We never got around to lowering the crib so now I have a little guy that knows he could pull himself up on the side that is too short so he could fall over. So, I have to lower his crib by myself. Did I mention it is past Cooper's bedtime by this point and he is exhausted and screaming? I decided to try and put him to bed in the portacrib.....bad idea. Cooper wanted no part of the portacrib and got even more upset. So then I tried the bouncy chair and bounced him with my foot while unscrewing the screws. That was working until I discovered that one of the screws didn't want to cooperate. Instead of just the screw coming out, the part the screw screws into decided to come out as well. While trying to figure out how to fix it I noticed that there were no holes lower than the ones the bottom of the bed was already screwed into. It took me a minute to realize that the bottom of the bed was attached upside down! Instead of being able to unscrew one side and move it lower, then unscrew the other side and lower it, I now had to remove the entire bottom of the bed, flip it over, and put it back together, all with a screw that didn't want to come out! Here's the uncooperative screw.....

You can see how the bracket curves upwards instead of down. What I ended up doing was to unscrew the bracket from the bottom of the bed, remove the screw and the screw sleeve, (I don't know what that part is technically called) use pliers to hold the screw sleeve so I could remove the screw from the screw sleeve, Put the screw sleeve back, reattach the bracket to the bed, then put the crib back together. All of this was accomplished with poor Cooper screaming from the portacrib because he was exhausted and wanted to sleep in his bed. Poor baby, as soon as I got it fixed I just set him in his bed and he grabbed his blanket and went to sleep without a peep. All he wanted was his bed ;) The moral of the story is.....lower the crib before your child learns how to pull himself up!