I think my son will win a gold medal at the Olympics some day in the future. He is a gymnast and was able to climb out of his playpen at 20 months and thought nothing of trying to pull himself on to my kitchen counters. Fortunately, he has not mastered that task yet. However he has mastered the task of climbing out of his crib.

My husband first told me that he climbed out one Saturday morning. Luckily, he got out fine and did not hurt himself. We were hoping that this was a one time thing, but unfortunately, it was not. Was it time to put him into a big boy bed? I sought out advice from everyone from my Mom to online friends. My Mom said when I was a baby there were railings to go on top of the crib rail. So at first I tried to find those. They did not exist anymore. Someone had suggested a crib tent. I really did not like the concept of my son being caged in, so I resisted the idea at first. Finally, one day when he would not take a nap and climbed out at least a dozen times in an hour I had to reconsider my previous belief. So off to Babies R Us to purchase the Tots in Mind Crib tent and spending $60 which is about $20 too much. However Tots in Mind seems to be the only manufacturer.

I am not very mechanically inclined so I waited until my husband came home from work to assemble since there were a lot of pieces. The instructions were step by step and did number the pieces, however my husband just kind of looked at it and said: "how do I put this together." Some pieces were not manufactured correctly and we had to make a few modifications, access holes missing in some fabric support sleeves and such. After that, we did figure it out and it was done about an hour later.

The crib tent secures to any standard crib. It has velcro straps that tie on to the sides of the crib and two segmented poles which slip inside the sleeves of the mesh tent material for support. It looks like a camping tent with the two rods that cross about 18 inches above the crib bars. My son does have plenty of room to stand up and reach his hands straight up. In other words, he has ample room for jumping up and down if he wants and trust me, he does want. The mesh material is flame resistant and it zips up easy.

Since we've had the crib tent for just about two months, I don't know how long it will be effective for us. It is allowing me to keep my son in a crib for a while longer before we have to move to a toddler bed and it allows me some piece of mind to know that my son will not crawl out of bed, open his door and wander around the house himself. However I do let it create a false sense of security.



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