BAGS OF BABIES

I don't know what we would have done without Aunt Kristin's advice and generosity in lending us these sleep sacs.

Since September Lennox has been scaling his crib and jumping out. Lamb and I would be watching t.v. around 11pm, and we'd hear the tinkling of piano keys from the living room. X would have made his way upstairs in the dark for a little music (and who knows what else before we heard him). On our trip to CA where the boys slept in small port-a-cribs (and in the same room), X showed Oli how it's done. We must have lifted them back into those cribs 700 times.

Not long after we got home from CA, Oliver started waltzing into the family room long after we had put him to bed, trains in tow, ready to play. Instead of chaining them to their cribs, we zip them in these warm and cozy bags. Now they can't swing their legs up or grip the bars with their little toes to escape. Oliver freaked out the first night. He quickly figured out how to unzip and shed his straight jacket, so now we have to safety pin his zipper.

Because Oliver mastered the "child-proof" doorknob covers ages ago, this system gives me peace of mind. I don't worry about finding him in the backyard in the middle of the night.

Months ago we removed the chairs from our kitchen to prevent the boys climbing onto the table, counters and stove. Recently I unscrewed the handle from the lowest drawer in the kitchen; the boys were using it as a ladder. Half the furniture in the family room has been relocated. And nail heads in the wall indicate where pictures hung before, tiptoeing on the couch, our boys swatted down the frames. Maybe for Christmas, Santa could bring us a monkey.