Guess who came running down the hall this morning while I was still in bed and her Daddy was still getting ready for work yelling, “I just get out my Blankie!”??
Yes. My little monkey finally climbed out of her crib this morning. Which meant I spent the day frantically obtaining all the needed items to make her crib into a big-girl bed by bedtime. See, I have been in serious denial that this day would ever come. If I could have, I would have kept her in her crib until age 16. I’ve had this huge fear of “The Big-Girl-Bed Transition,” thinking that it would lead to lots of problems getting her to stay in bed and go to sleep, or issues with her waking up at night, or some such other nonsense. So I have avoided any steps toward making The Transition. And although I have occasionally thought, “Maybe I should get the conversion rails for her crib and some guard rails so we’ll be ready when we need to transition her to a full-size bed” I have never actually gotten my rear in gear and gotten these items. I didn’t want to think I would need them soon. So this morning found me anxiously awaiting 9 am to call the children’s furniture store where we bought her crib, hoping that they would have everything I needed in stock so the transition would be smooth. They didn’t have the right color rails, but the guy at the store sold me what they had and ordered the right color and told me I could just exchange these for the correctly colored ones when they come in. Nice, right??
After naps (she napped in her crib, BTW, without any attempt to climb out again) we went shopping for “big-girl sheets,” and a waterproof mattress pad and a new pillow. We found some cute sheets and I let Miss choose between a new fluffy bird pillow and an owl pillow to match the sheets (she chose the owl). We read a new book about a big-girl bed several times today and generally made a big deal about it all day. She observed almost the whole production of putting her big-girl bed together. All the while we were telling her about Daddy putting her big-girl bed together so she can sleep on it and so on. She “helped” me put the new sheets on and of course we put her Bear and Elmo and Blankie in the bed too. I didn’t put any other bedding on other than sheets and her Blankie. I figured she had enough to get used to for right now, and she still flips and moves all around in bed so having lots of blankets on would just turn into a mess. And I actually ditched the pillow I bought and substituted a small toddler-size pillow my grandma made for her instead. I wanted her to have a pillow, but the one I bought today was just too big. And she loves the little embroidered pillow from Great-Grandma, so into the bed it went. She thought the new big-bed was pretty cool.
And, as is so often the case with my mommy-worries, my worst fears about this transition did not come to fruition. At least for now, she is peacefully sleeping in her big-girl bed, where she went to bed without any issues or struggles or climbing out or anything else. And thank goodness for the video monitor, which will hopefully help me to sleep peacefully tonight as well. Fingers crossed. . .