One Step Behind

I really thought I had this parenting stuff all figured out with Hope. I sorta thought I had it pretty much down with Naomi. Joel has proven I have little clue what the heck I'm doing.

He figured out how to get out of his crib last December. Thankfully after a few nights, he quit climbing out. After Daniel was born and I couldn't pick Joel up, he started using a footstool to climb into his crib when I'd put him to bed at night. I guess that reminded him of how to crawl out of it too. After we got back from our trip to Oregon, he started getting out of bed whenever he felt like it. In our attempts to deal with his escapes, we've been one step behind him the entire time.

-We put a gate up in front of his room so, even if he got out of his crib, he couldn't get out of his room, so he figured out how to unlatch the gate and leave his room. Then we.......
-Took apart the bunk beds and put him in the bed that has a rail around it. At least, we thought, he'd feel somewhat contained and would stay in bed. And we played up the big boy bed idea and let him listen to VeggieTales when he was falling asleep. And we put up a different gate with a harder latch for him to undo. But then he got out of bed at 4 or 5 in the morning to turn Veggies on full-blast. So we.......
-Left him in the big boy bed but put Veggies on repeat so they'd play all night. Maybe if he had music to listen to, he'd stay in bed and go back to sleep if he woke up early. He enjoyed the music, but he got out of bed anyway to play with the toys, and woke Naomi up in the process so she got up and played too. So the toys got put up in the top of the closet to minimize the distractions for him....
-Still didn't work. He was up at 5 the next morning pulling clothes out of the closet. I put him back in bed and told him to go back to sleep. Yeah, right. He got back up and, instead of mastering the latch on the new gate, just pushed hard enough to knock it over.
-Back to the crib for him. We told him if he got out of bed, he'd get spanked. We left the spoon in plain sight to remind him he'd get spanked. He got out of bed, and got spanked, several times. So...
-:( He started getting spanked with no diaper on. Maybe it just wasn't providing the motivation to obey because it really didn't hurt much with all that padding. And voila, he stayed in his crib..........
-For two nights. Then he was climbing out again. So I found a crib tent on Craigslist. WooHoo- now he can't get out- there's a cage over the top of the crib! But after one night, he......
-Figured out how to unzip the tent. I tucked the zipper into the pocket so he couldn't get his finger into the zipper, but he stuck his arm under the rail to reach the zipper and open the tent. Sooooooo, we.....
-Turned the crib around. He can still open the zipper on the tent, but with the opening against the wall, he can't go anywhere.

I have no doubt that in a few days, he'll figure out how to push the crib away from the wall and escape. I've really thought about turning the pack n' play upside down and putting it over him in the crib, but he'd pull on the handle to collapse the bottom of it. I am completely at a loss. How do I keep him in a bed? He can reach and unlock the deadbolt on the front door, and he knows if he gets a stepstool he can reach the garage door opener, so if he wanted to he could get out of the house while we were asleep. I have no clue, short of locking him in a room, what to do about this kid who is always one step ahead of whatever I think will keep him contained. To be continued, I guess..............