One morning on my husbands day off I woke up to the normal sound of banging on the wall

. Our 18 month old son was telling us he's awake.

I got up and opened his door knocking him over. Realizing that he has climbed out of his playpen (it's a playpen with a mattress, I'm not spending money on a real crib don't judge me) I let him go wake up his Daddy. He was equally surprised and impressed by our little creation.

Nap time was a disaster. i was so afraid he was going to hurt himself climbing out of the playpen. I had observed him do it once and what he does is, curls a foot of toes around the top of the side, and use that as an anchor to lift the rest of his body up and rolls over the side. My husband put pillows down around the playpen but i felt that only encouraged the behavior. It ended up taking me three hours to get him to sleep for 30 minutes. I was an extremely ANGRY mama. I was tired, angry, and i had no idea what the fuck I was supposed to do.

Then i did research, as much as i could from Google anyway. From everything I read it was either get him to understand that climbing out of bed is a no-no,(not possible, he doesn't understand, he just wants his mama and dada and not be alone in his room, if he can climb out, he's going to) or out him in a toddler bed. And in my personal opinion, my son is not ready for that yet. maybe when he's 2 or 3 but definitely not yet.

The only thing that i could find that was useful was an idea of putting on a long tshirt and tieing off the bottom. Sleep sacks were also a huge suggestion but i have no access to those as I've put all his old ones in storage and they're probably too small anyways.

Next morning i get up to get our son. He was once again out of the playpen. he had shimmied the shirt down far enough that he could get his leg up through one of the armholes. 🙄

Instantly I knew my plan. I grabbed two old tiedie tshirts that dont fit his dad anymore, a 24 month shirt, and my sewing machine. 😁 By naptime I had a long tietye shirt in his size. Long enough that it can be tied at the bottom with a knot. And it WORKED!!! Now he has 2 that i was and rotate and he stays in his playpen!! I was so relieved it worked, I have no idea what else I would've done. My only dislike of it is that his feet are super warm when i get him up in the morning but the shirts are 100% cotton and it'd be no different in a sleeper with footies so🤷🏻‍♀️