This past January, I posted a story called Her Highness, the Queen of the Crib, in which I described my daughter’s first foray out of her crib at the tender age of fourteen months.
[Note: I realized too late that queens receive the honorific “her majesty”, not “her highness”. I seriously considered changing the title, but eventually decided that I was probably the only one who noticed the mixup. (Until now, obviously.)]
That story concluded with my taping up a piece of cardboard and celebrating that I had trapped my daughter in her crib. You might remember this hilarious picture:
However, even in the midst of victory, I acknowledged that trouble still brewed on the horizon, concluding that story with some overt foreshadowing: “My daughter has yet to escape from her crib again — but it’s really only a matter of time. Some aggressive bite marks attest to efforts to eat her way through the cardboard.”
Did you ever wonder how that situation resolved?
Perhaps not. (In which case, skip this post, because the fewer people that know this story, the better.)
However, if you’re still just aching to know how we managed such an active little climber, then read on.
But, be forewarned: our solution was a bit… unconventional.
I posted Her Highness, the Queen of the Crib on January 29, at which point my flimsy cardboard blocker was still intact — barely.
For a while — that is, for just over a week — the blocker continued to work. However, I was dismayed by how quickly it deteriorated under my daughter’s onslaught. If we had any hope of extending the cardboard solution, then it needed to be replaced — soon.
But life gets busy, and other things kept requiring my attention. Then, on February 7, I miscarried our third child, and that completely took my mind off the cardboard blocker.
So, our story picks up two days later, on Tuesday afternoon. It was just before nap time — and let me tell you: I needed nap time. Losing Occidentalis had left me physically and emotionally exhausted, so I was desperately hoping to snag a snooze of my own.
I hurried the kids through their routine — potty, books, prayer, kisses. [Note: This was, of course, before Aza was potty-trained.] I noticed with chagrin the completely broken-down state of the cardboard blocker, which was now nearly as floppy as denim. As I kissed a grumpy Australis, I made an urgent mental note to replace the cardboard that evening.
When I kissed Borealis, he looked up at me with big peridot eyes and suggested, “Maybe we can skip your nap?”
[Note: This was also back when he was reversing his pronouns.]
I laughed. “Yeah, no. Mommy needs you to take a nap because Mommy needs to take a nap, too. So I need you to….”
“Stay in your bed!”
“Right. It’s important that you let Aza sleep, too.”
Bo blinked at me innocently, and I could almost believe that he intended to obey.
I wound up the musical snow globe and, over Aza’s bellows, called, “Goodnight, kids! I love you!”
A minute later, I nestled into my bed and flipped to 1 Kings 19, which I read through tears.
The familiar passage soothed the ache in my soul, but did nothing for my exhausted body — and, unfortunately, I could hear that my kids were still awake. It sounded like they were playing their favorite game: Aza threw a stuffed animal out of her crib, and Bo returned it to her… ad nauseam. Their shrieks of laughter suggested that sleep was not on the agenda for either of them — or, by extension, for me. Even so, I still hoped for a few more minutes of rest.
That is, until I heard a loud thud, followed by Bo’s cry of, “The Bible!”
The irony was thick.
I rolled out of bed and raced into the nursery. Sure enough, our toddler Bible lay open on the floor, its spine newly broken. The obvious culprit sat in the Bible’s former spot, on the changing table — a full foot away from her crib.
Scooping up Australis, I asked/shouted, “Why did you do that!? And how did you do that?”
I can only speculate at the method of her escape: push over the softened cardboard, climb atop crib rail, step/leap to changing table… and immediately throw toddler Bible to the floor.
“Maybe we can skip your nap?” Bo suggested again.
“AAAAARGH! Fine! Get up and go potty!” I snapped. Australis writhed in my arms, so I set her down to follow her brother.
I crumpled onto the rug and bit back a sob. Why is everything going wrong at once? I wondered. I feel like I can’t catch a break.
I allowed myself a few more seconds of self-pity, then decided that, at the very least, I needed to go check on my kids. It would be painfully ironic if I saved my daughter from a fall only to let her drown in the toilet.
My children were, thankfully, still alive. I shooed them out of the bathroom and set them up with a snack at the dining room table, where I sat with them and assessed the situation. The cardboard blocker may have won me a single battle, but Aza was certainly poised to win the war. With regard to potential solutions, our previous thought process (as described in Her Highness) still applied: no strangulation-hazard nets, no expensive anti-climbing pajamas, and no premature transition to a toddler bed.
At this point, the best option of the bunch seemed to be the sheet of plywood over the crib — or something very much like it. Something secure, and sturdy, and reusable.
Something like… a dog crate. (Hypothetically, of course.)
An hour later, Taylor came home to an unexpected sight: the kids and I sitting on the kitchen floor, surrounded by the freshly-sanitized components of Aza’s new bed.
Taylor stopped short. “Uh… what are you doing with—”
I quickly preempted his question. “Aza’s new fairy bed.” I intentionally overemphasized the euphemistic label, because PR is everything.
Taylor remained silent for several seconds, then finally asked, “Do you really think this is a good idea?”
I rocked back on my heels and nodded. “Yeah, I do. She climbed out of her crib again today, and there’s only so much longer that we can use cardboard to keep her ‘safe’. I need to be able to put her down for a nap without worrying that she’s going to break her neck.”
I paused to allow Taylor to rebut. He didn’t, so I continued. “She also can’t sleep when she’s able to engage Bo in the toss-my-stuffed-animals game. Have you noticed how cranky she’s been this past week?”
Taylor: <grunts noncommittally>
“Well, she has, and it’s because she’s been napping incompletely — if at all. Which means that Bo doesn’t nap, either. It’s not sustainable, for any of us.”
Taylor: <grunts in reluctant assent>
I plowed on. “This is not inherently ‘unsafe’. We’re not leaving her unattended. If there’s a fire, we’ll have to get her out, but that would be true of a crib, too — that is, for a baby who couldn’t climb out.” I paused, then added, “And actually, from a smoke inhalation standpoint, this is safer than her crib because it’s at ground level.”
Taylor: <grunts in consideration>
I knew I was winning him over, so I made my concluding remark. “This will just achieve what a crib is supposed to do: keep her safe while she sleeps. Unless you think she’s ready for a big girl bed…?”
My husband visibly shuddered. We could both imagine the unsupervised dangers our fearless fifteen-month-old would seek out.
Eventually, he sighed and conceded, “I agree that the current crib situation is no longer feasible, but that she’s also not yet ready for a toddler bed.”
I grinned. “So we’ll try it?”
“We’ll try it.” <pause> “But I want to go on record by saying that I don’t like it.”
Aza, unfortunately, agreed with her father: she didn’t like it. Her obvious aversion to the fairy bed dampened my enthusiasm and made me cast about once again for another option. Given that bedtime was rapidly approaching, no solutions came to mind.
Borealis, on the other hand, picked up where my excitement had tapered off. “Aza! You will sleep here, and I will sleep in my bed. See?”
He demonstrated by crawling into the fairy bed and pretending to doze. I was glad that at least one of our children understood the plan — although my relief was snuffed out when my son sat up, stuck his fingers through the grated window, and announced, “These holes are so small, and Aza will never be able to get out, ever again!”
“CPS will love to hear that,” Taylor deadpanned.
“No!” I spluttered. “No, Bo, Aza will just be in here while she is sleeping. When she wakes up, I will come in here and get her out! This is to keep her safe.”
Bo side-eyed me from within the fairy bed. Taylor side-eyed me from outside the fairy bed.
“Ughhhhhh,” I moaned. “Ok, Aza, will you at least go in?”
My daughter looked at me, then looked at the fairy bed, then climbed into Taylor’s lap and clung to his flannel shirt.
“You’d think this was a dragon bed,” I muttered. “Ok, Bo, scoot over a bit.”
Bo moved to one side of the bed, allowing me to crawl in beside him. I turned around so that I was facing Taylor and Aza, then gestured to the bed. “See? Mommy and Bo like it. Will you try it?”
Aza looked at me pensively, then cautiously approached the fairy bed. She set one hand inside, which gave me license to pull her fully within the bed. It was a tight fit with me and both kids, but workable. Still, I was glad that the enclosure was slated for single-occupancy.
“Maybe nurse her in there?” Taylor suggested. “And that might make it seem more homey.”
“Good idea,” I acknowledged. I shooed Bo out of the bed, then asked Aza, “Do you want boobies?”
My daughter, who had followed her brother out of the fairy bed, promptly did an about-face. I let her crawl in next to me, then tucked up my legs so that we were both fully within the bed. Bo immediately took the opportunity to shut the door, which — thankfully — he was unable to latch.
“Yeah, that’ll convince her,” I muttered. Aza, however, didn’t seem to notice the door, which Bo was now slamming open and closed. I stuck out a leg to halt the cycle.
“Bo, please stop. That’s super obnoxious.”
In response, Bo slammed the door against my leg.
“Ok, buddy, let’s go find something else to do,” Taylor sighed. The two left for greener pastures in the living room.
Aza nursed for the next several minutes, and by the end of our session, she had visibly relaxed. Even so, she hustled out of the fairy bed once I pulled my shirt back up. She followed Bo into the living room, where the two of them quickly forgot about bedtime.
I, however, could think of little else. I sidled up to Taylor and muttered, “Should we bail? Is this just a really bad idea?”
Taylor sighed deeply, then eventually answered, “No, I think this is actually a pretty good idea. I’ve been racking my brain for a different solution and haven’t come up with one — besides just replacing the cardboard over and over.”
“That’s just courting disaster,” I argued. “It’ll only take one night of misjudging the cardboard’s strength, and — boom! — we’re down to one kid. Plus, that doesn’t solve the stuffed animal tossing.”
“Exactly — reasons why I don’t like the cardboard idea either.” Another sigh. “I think the optics on this solution are not good, but I think the safety profile is good. I don’t know how else you’ll keep her safe and well-rested during nap time.”
I leaned into Taylor’s side. “So you don’t think I’m a terrible mom?”
“No, although probably other people will. We should keep this on the DL.”
And so we did. (Until now, obviously.)
Aza warmed to her new bed with record speed. After an initial adjustment period, we encountered few issues with her sleeping situation. She readily dove into the bed for nap and bed times, and used it as a cozy play place during the day, too. (Of course, she had to compete with Bo, who also wanted to hang out in the plush space.)
After some discussion, Taylor and I decided to leave Aza’s outdated crib in the nursery. The structure served primarily as a prop, and secondarily as a (supervised!) climbing gym. Australis showed virtually no signs of wanting to return to sleeping in the “baby crib”; her “big girl fairy bed” was much more to her liking. (Again, PR is everything.)
Even so, we were relatively tight-lipped regarding our daughter’s sleeping arrangements — and for good reason. After all, the use of a fairy bed seems to imply some negligence and disregard for a toddler’s welfare, but our situation was quite the opposite. If anything, this was the aspect of parenting in which I felt the least negligent.
Thankfully, most of the people to whom we revealed our “secret” eventually came around. They saw how much Aza loved her fairy bed, and how attentive we were to her waking and sleeping, and they concluded that our decision was born out of care, not indifference.
Even so, I was anxious to transition Aza out of her fairy bed and into a toddler bed. However, no amount of maternal anxiety was able to speed up my daughter’s psychological readiness.
Now, the transition from a crib to a toddler bed is very child-specific. As a result, “expert”-suggested timing varies widely, but the advice typically falls between eighteen months and three years old. (Although, some professionals urge parents to delay until after three, which sounds both implausible and impractical. But I digress.)
In short, the toddler-bed-transition is less about age and more about impulse control: that is, does the toddler have the mental capacity (and/or desire) to stay put in a toddler bed? Unfortunately for us, the answer for Aza was still a resounding NO. (For reference, we still buckled her in at mealtime, lest she launch herself from her highchair — again.)
Alas, we would have to be patient.
So weeks turned into months, and winter turned into spring. Somewhat unsurprisingly, my writing during that season was an exercise in vague wording. For example, There’s No Dragon Like Snow Dragon employs the generic phrase “nap time”. Similarly, A Brave Little Toaster Has a Brave Little Toaster conveniently concludes before bedtime, facilitated that night for the first time by our fifteen-year-old babysitter. Unsurprisingly, she was less-than-thrilled about Aza’s sleep situation. (But, notably, she still works for us, so it clearly wasn’t that traumatizing.) And, finally, A Tale of Two Poopies omits a lengthy brainstorming session about how to night-train Aza if she couldn’t leave her bed overnight. [Note: That last issue resolved itself almost immediately. She stopped peeing at night within several weeks of our day-training her, and she’s had only a handful of nighttime accidents in the months since.] After that, I finally started cranking out installments of The Birth of Australis, which shifted the spotlight away from Aza’s fairy bed.
Drafting that birth story saga consumed much of my summer. (And, it was way harder with two verbal kids. The Birth of Borealis is a significantly longer series, but it was much more punctually published.) By the time I started on the final installment of Aza’s birth story, I hardly batted an eye at the nursery’s setup, and I no longer felt an urgent need to change it. That is, until Taylor unceremoniously decided, “Ok, we’re done with this fairy bed. It takes up too much room.”
[Note: If this announcement reminds you of my husband’s abrupt Christmas tree decision in Bah-Humburglary, or his sudden potty-training announcement in Poop Goes *IN* the Potty… The answer is yes. He does this a lot.]
Even so, I wasn’t willing to blithely go along with the decision. “Uh, it takes up about the same amount of space as the crib,” I pointed out.
“Yes, which is why it’s so frustrating that we have them both in the nursery.”
We didn’t need to rehash the crib debate, so I cut right to the chase. “Do you think she’s ready to move to a toddler bed?”
Taylor nodded confidently. “Yes.” <pause> “Well, I mean, maybe. I think so, at least.”
“Compelling.”
Taylor grinned. “Well, I think it’s worth a shot. The only problem is, that crib doesn’t convert to a toddler bed. I mean, I could make it a toddler bed, but not without seriously damaging the crib. Or building new parts for it.”
“I don’t really like either of those ideas. I think we should just get a bed frame for the DreamCloud, and then we’ll use Bo’s toddler bed for Aza.”
“Yeah. Like we haven’t tried finding a bed frame.”
Taylor made a good point. Back in the spring, I had picked up a “new” (i.e. open box) DreamCloud twin XL for Bo, but we had yet to procure an appropriate bed frame. Everything seemed either too expensive or too cheap. Neither of us could decide on what we wanted: something inexpensive that would quickly deteriorate, or something pricey that would last through Bo’s high school years. Of course, I wanted the best of both worlds: a bed frame that was both inexpensive and lasting.
So, I once again suggested a distasteful — but effective — solution. “We could make one…?”
Taylor: <grunts in preemptive exhaustion> “Still expensive. Lumber has come down in price, but it’s still not free. I ran the numbers, remember? It would still be, like, $200 in materials. And that doesn’t account for my labor, either.”
“Yeah, that’s not great.” I conceded.
Taylor: <grunts conclusively>
Then, I suddenly remembered a source of free wood. “Wait — my parents’ old fence! Could you make the bed out of cedar?”
Earlier that summer, my parents had replaced their fence, and they had graciously allowed me to dismantle and store the old wood in their backyard. Originally, I intended to use that material to make some sort of wedding backdrop (a desire which I’ll eventually explain, I’m sure). I realized, however, that the high-quality 4×4 cedar beams would be better employed in a bed frame, rather than languishing in perpetuity until I finally got around to backdrop-construction.
Taylor, thankfully, seemed to agree. After several seconds, he conceded, “Well… that could work.”
Several weeks later, after the purchase of a planer and many hours of work, Bo’s twin XL bed frame was *almost* complete.
Given fewer constraints — no kids, no neighbors — we would have finished the frame sooner. But, it’s hardly like we could use a table saw with toddlers around, or a planer after our neighbors had gone to bed. So, the work was relegated to times when the kids were occupied, before 9pm: nap time, bedtime, or Mommy play time. (I help, but I can’t independently work wood like Taylor can.)
However, even despite the frame’s lack of completion, Taylor decided that he was 100% done with the nursery’s current layout. In a single morning, he broke down the unused crib, took apart the fairy bed, and replaced Bo’s toddler bed with the twin XL mattress — artfully situated directly on the ground.
I had little say in the matter besides which linens dressed the beds. I had purchased new “big girl” sheets for Aza’s transition to the toddler bed, and we had plenty of twin XL sheets from the Mines dumpsters. (All washed, of course.) With the addition of two dumpster-salvaged blankets, the “new” nursery was complete — for now.
The kids were excited about the room’s new setup — or, more specifically, about one part of it: Bo’s grown-up bed. I tried to get Aza to spend time in her new toddler bed, too, but she stubbornly snuggled with her brother at the foot of his mattress, instead.
Well, at least they were adorable.
[Note: Shortly after this picture was taken, Bo wore a hole through Blankey, which has long been a beloved companion — featuring in such stories as Even Blankets Do Hard Time, Colorado Mom, and Her Highness, the Queen of the Crib. As a result, I had to unknit, sort through, and reknit the blanket’s constituent yarn — a shocking amount of which was now completely unusable. So, I decided to finish off the piece with incomplete skeins that I just happened to have in the right yarn (Wool-Ease Thick & Quick). The final quarter of Blankey is now maroon, navy, and black… but Bo eventually came around.]
So, in short, the kids were quite amenable to Bo’s new bed, but Aza had no desire to check out her new bed. I suspected that we were in for a fight that afternoon.
And, indeed, we were. Just as Aza had initially disliked her fairy bed, she now disliked her toddler bed. The major difference was, she hadn’t been able to *leave* the fairy bed. Oh, and I decided to end our nap time nursing sessions cold-turkey — so, in short, she was piping mad, for multiple reasons.
I took the kids through their normal nap time routines, but Aza kept springing out of bed like an overeager jack-in-the-box. Eventually, I gave up on fighting: I just placed her in her bed, sprinted from the room, and closed the door as she thundered after me. She rattled the doorknob once, then stomped back toward Bo’s bed. I listened carefully at the door and imagined the wild antics on the other side.
Within a few minutes, I was sure that the thing which I feared had come to pass: with Aza free to roam, neither child would be napping. Instead, Borealis present-narrated the situation with all the gusto of a seasoned sports reporter: “No! Do not jump on your bed! Aza! Get back in your big girl bed! That’s ok. No, stop! Do not throw that!”
I comforted myself that, at the very least, Aza still couldn’t open doors — but the same was not true of Bo. Only a few minutes later, he poked his head out of the nursery and asked, “Mom, can you come put Aza back in her big girl bed? She’s being naughty.”
And that was a pretty good harbinger for the ordeal to come.
The following day, I let Bo skip his nap, and the two of us grimaced through an hour of Aza’s angry screaming. Eventually, she gave up and crawled into her toddler bed, where she napped like… well, like a toddler who had screamed for an hour straight. The next day, I tried to have Bo nap too, but he gave up after twenty minutes of being badgered by his overtired sister.
Over the following weeks, one thing became clear: there was absolutely no way that Aza would nap if Borealis was also in the room. It didn’t matter how tired she was; if her brother was present, then it was playtime. So, I quickly gave up on Bo’s “naps”. After all, he rarely slept, anyway; the activity was more accurately called “quiet time”. We decided to move that time to the couch, then to a LoveSac in the office. (I realized that I needed a door between him and me; otherwise, “quiet time” wasn’t very quiet.)
With Bo absent, Aza’s nap time took on a different routine. After using the potty and gathering her special friends, she would crawl into her toddler bed and toss restlessly as I sang a never-ending bevy of nursery rhymes. (Baa, Baa Black Sheep and I Had a Little Nut Tree are favorites.)
I felt like a court jester performing for, well, a queen. Sometimes, she was satisfied with only a few songs; more often, though, she wanted me to sing until she fell asleep. I’d try to sneak out of her room, only to have her jolt up in bed, burst into tears, and yell, “Again!” Though it went against my principles to fold to such obvious manipulation, I usually complied with her demands.
Bed time, on the other hand, was not nearly such a fight. Typically, both children were so tired that they fell asleep quickly, with only minimal screaming on Aza’s part. Other nights had significantly more screaming, but Taylor and I would tell ourselves that “all screaming stops eventually”. Regardless, each of these evenings ended in the same way: eventually, Aza would wear herself and climb back into her bed — and Taylor and I would breathe a sigh of relief.
We were sure that, once our children were asleep, they wouldn’t stir until morning. And that theory was true… mostly.
I have long been a night owl, so the days when I rise before my children are few and far between. Much more often, they wake up and somehow inform me of their alertness. When each was very little, that communication took the form of crying, which was replaced by screaming, which was replaced by talking, which was eventually replaced by simply coming into my room and rousing me from sleep. (Highly effective, if unpleasant for me.)
Additionally, my proclivity to snooze later than my children is compounded by Aza’s obvious wiring as an early bird — a predisposition that has only been exacerbated by her move to a toddler bed. Back in the days of sleeping in a fairy bed, Aza would have to wake her brother by yelling and/or talking at him. Since Bo is a heavy sleeper, this process was not instantaneous.
However, with her move to a toddler bed, she now has unhindered access to his person, and she quickly found that shaking and/or slapping is a highly effective means of waking a sibling. This discovery was evident in a major shift in the timing of the kids’ morning wakeup, which has crept ever earlier even as sunrise slipped later. I was never awake early enough to observe the process, but I assumed that Aza was rising at the behest of her biological clock, then climbing into Bo’s bed — now complete with a bed frame — to secure his help in leaving the room.
However, that assumption was soon challenged. On a rare morning when the kids slept in, Taylor poked his head into the nursery, then just as quickly withdrew it. “Uh, Aza’s snuggling with Bo in his bed,” he informed me.
I was still waking up, so I didn’t immediately jump up to see the toddler cuddles. By the time I had dragged myself from my room, my kids had accomplished the same feat — so I would have to take Taylor’s account at face value. It was only one instance — but still, we kept the matter in mind.
A few days later, Taylor proposed, “I think something’s happening overnight that we can’t see, and we’ll miss it if we’re just watching for it on the monitor.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Then what do you suggest?”
“I want to get another one of the indoor security cams we use to watch the backdoor. That would record movement that we wouldn’t otherwise see.”
I shrugged. “Make it happen, number one.”
And so, a few days after that, we had a functional security camera, indefatigably spying on our kids. I immediately wondered how we had ever survived without one. Now, the camera automatically captured Aza’s restless twitches and blank stares — rendered soulless and demonic by the low light. She tossed and turned for nearly a half-hour that evening. Bo, on the other hand, fell asleep within several minutes.
“Aw, they’re like us!” Taylor observed sweetly.
“Indeed,” I deadpanned. “Well, we’ve always known that she takes after my mom’s side.”
Insomnia, high-volume bladders, and early-bird-ness all feature prominently in my mother’s lineage; thus, it wasn’t too surprising that, like me, my daughter couldn’t fall asleep quickly. She finally closed her eyes around 8pm, and we were relieved that she was finally settled for the night.
Except, she wasn’t. Just after 11pm, the security camera reported movement in the nursery. Taylor and I paused in our bedtime routine to watch the drama unfold.
The footage showed Aza rising from her bed, climbing over the railing, and crawling the length of Bo’s mattress.
Bo, for his part, didn’t stir. After a few seconds of adjusting the blankets, Aza settled against her brother and immediately returned to sleep.
“Oh,” I observed lamely. “Well… that won’t last forever, but it seems to be working for right now.”
Taylor: <grunts in weary agreement>
Two months have passed since that night, and Aza still climbs into Bo’s bed — but only sometimes.
A lot has changed regarding our kids’ sleep schedules — mainly, adjusting for the fact that Bo no longer takes naps. We had assumed that, since he had independently stopped napping, he didn’t need the extra sleep. However, weeks of an insanely cranky toddler boy disabused us of that notion. We now put Bo to bed an hour earlier than Aza, and they each appreciate their individualized bedtimes.
In an accompanying shift, Aza recognized that Bo’s absence meant that his bed was available for nap time. She now exclusively naps in his bed, which he graciously allows. Even better, she has settled into a nap time routine that calls for only two songs — rather than several dozen.
Furthermore, we finally caved and bought a toddler alarm clock. It was more pricey than I would have preferred, but it has effectively halted the forward creep of the kids’ wake-up time. We have it set to a red light for “sleeping” and a green light for “morning”.
These days, Aza generally stays in her room the whole night — but the toddler clock was only a small piece of that puzzle. It was a complicated process to eliminate her jack-in-the-box behavior — much more complicated than described herein. (I mean, I didn’t even get to the part where she learned how to open the nursery door!) All told, we’re extremely relieved to be through the worst of it.
On a similar note, our daughter also tends to stay in her own bed most nights. However, on mornings when she wakes up before their toddler clock has turned green, she crawls into Bo’s bed to wait out the remainder of the “sleeping” time.
Oh, and lastly, I finally set a definite end-date for nursing: her birthday, next week. I know she’ll miss it, but I haven’t *actually* produced milk for more than a month now. She’ll have to just settle for snuggles, instead.
Which is to say… she’s no different from anyone else with an unrequited desire for boobies.