About two weeks ago, the inevitable happened.

We had gone to visit my in-laws in Florida.  It was a late-night arrival, and while the kids stayed awake pretty much the whole flight, Daniel passed out while leaning on me as we made our descent.  I pulled him up to carry him, and he didn’t wake up. I picked up various carry-ons from the floor, slung them over my shoulder, and made my way out of the plane, and he didn’t wake up.  I put him into his cold, gate-checked carseat and buckled him in, not a peep.  Latched the seat into my mother-in-law’s car with him in it, nothing.  Took him out of the car, brought him inside, put him down on the bed, and pulled off his shoes and jeans, and still, he slept.

We plopped both passed-out kids into the mini-cribs that always await them in Florida, plugged in the GoodNite Lite, and hoped they wouldn’t freak out when they woke up in a strange place.

At the appointed hour of the nightlight wake-up, I heard happy chatter and got up to retrieve the kids.  The door was cracked open, and I could see a light on, much brighter than the yellow sun we brought with us.  “That’s weird,” I thought. “Maybe that light is on a timer? Or maybe my mother-in-law heard the kids before I did and is in there?”  Then the light turned off.

I opened the door, and there was Daniel. On the couch. Turning the light off and on (much to his grumpy sister’s chagrin).  I asked Daniel how he got onto the couch, and he happily described that the blue moon was on (the nightlight), but that he had a poopy diaper and he climbed out (blessedly, said diaper was still intact and latched to his person).

I had long suspected the kids had really outgrown these mini cribs, and was amazed they made it as many trips as they did without the self-propelled exit. I was glad he hadn’t tipped it over, with its somewhat high center of gravity.

But hey, we made it to almost 2 1/2 before our first incident of climbing out of the crib. And we haven’t had another one.  Here’s why:

1. Luck.  Not just luck in that my kids aren’t super persistent climbers, nor particularly mischievous as toddlers go, though that is certainly lucky.  And I’m not naive enough to think that they’re really listening that well when I say that climbing in and out (as Daniel still sometimes talks about) is dangerous.  No, we’re lucky that we bought the right cribs.

They’re from Babies R Us, nothing spectacular. As I recall, they were about the least expensive ones we could find that we didn’t hate.  What makes them awesome is that, at the lowest mattress setting, it’s so deep that the crib rails come almost to my 2.5-year-olds’ shoulders.  Other cribs we’ve used while traveling, even the full-sized ones at my dad’s house, come barely past their belly buttons.  No wonder most kids climb out so much younger: the mattress just isn’t deep enough!  Did I know this when I bought these cribs? Of course not. Dumb luck.

2. Engineering. You notice I said we’ve used other full-sized cribs (as well as pack & plays and mini cribs) before, and this was still our first (and, so far, only) climbing incident.  There was one other unusual circumstance when Daniel made the literal leap.  In his passed-out state, though I did manage to get his shoes and jeans off, I didn’t bother to put on his sleep sack.

Yep.  My kids are still in sleep sacks.  Have been pretty much every nap and every night since they were six months old.  Even when the cribs would seem to have made climbing easier, they still can’t quite swing that leg up, or get the traction on their feet.  And to that, I say, Hallelujah.

I’ve heard people say they stopped using sleep sacks because they worried about restricting the kids’ mobility, but I can assure you that my kids can do just about anything (except climbing) in those things.  Walk, crawl, whatever.  There’s a little bit of luck in this one, too, as my kids have never made any kind of consistent effort to get out of their sleep sacks, though I suspect they’d be quite capable of it if they tried.

Of course, this will all be coming to an end.  Sometime this year, we will bid farewell to our beloved sleep sacks (which don’t appear to come in a larger size than the XL they’re currently wearing).  We will pull off the front rail and turn those cribs into toddler beds.

But for now, they have warm toes, and there are no suspicious thuds coming from their bedroom. I’d better enjoy it while it lasts.