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Saturday, March 9, 2013

Big Girl Bed Time

It has been several months since I've posted, a situation I fully plan to remedy by getting back to more regular posting! 

What's been going on since I last posted? 

1.  Monica is a full fledged little person now.  18 months old, and she definitely has a mind of her own.  We have been busy surviving the holidays, surviving our first illness-ridden winter, and surviving the scariness of joining our local MOMS Club group.  So, other than the holidays, our winter has been pretty busy between watching movies, wiping noses, and going to play dates. 

2.  In addition to all of that, we have other big news..... Monica is going to be a big sister!  Grub 2.0 is due in just three short months!

3.  In preparation for #2's arrival, Monica is being moved into a big girl bed so that #2 can have the crib.  We've decided to tackle this transition sooner than later, in hope that Monica will be comfortably settled in her big girl bed by the time #2 arrives in June.

How is that going, you may ask?  Well....to be honest, I'm not sure.  We're just wrapping up the first week. The first few days went surprisingly well, with little issue, and then....I'm just not sure what happened!  She seems to think that she doesn't need to sleep at all during the day, and while she goes to bed without issue at night, she wakes up after several hours and is tough to settle down. 

So, it was 2:30pm, I was starving for my lunch, and she was showing no signs of settling down during the 45 minutes I spent attempting to cajole her into getting in her bed.  It was time to change tactics.  So, I told her good-bye and goodnight, and left the room.  I locked her gate behind me and went out of sight into my own room.  I had my phone for visual support, and the monitor was on, so I decided to just wait and see what happened.




Surprisingly, she didn't freak out or scream for me to come back into the room.  Instead, she took this opportunity to inspect every nook and cranny of her diaper pail.











Then she pulled out and inspected every toy in her toy basket, most of which she has not played with in three or more months.











I became hopeful when she actually started to climb into the bed.  Hooray, we're moving in the right direction!  She's sleepy and she's heading for bed on her own accord!








Alas, it was a cruel ruse, as she jumped right back out of the bed.  Then she went on a mission to tear her changing pad off of the dresser and throw it around the room. 
Then, things got quiet.  But she was in the small area of the room closest to the door, where the camera doesn't have visibility, so I wasn't sure what was happening.  And I couldn't approach the doorway for a peek, for fear that she'd see me and start crying.  After a good five minutes of quiet, I decided I would angle my phone around the door to try to see what she was doing.


It's hard to tell in the pic above, but the very faint shadow through the lattice of the gate is her!

I waited five more minutes and then snuck into the hallway.

Kiddo was fast asleep on the floor, using the changing pad as a pillow.  Little weirdo!


I didn't want to risk going into her room for a small blanket, and everything in our bedroom is for a king sized bed.  So I grabbed a bath towel to drape over her for warmth.
She slept there for two straight hours, I couldn't believe it!  After tiptoeing around and whispering all afternoon - I couldn't close the door with her sleeping against it - JK and I went up to wake her at nearly 5pm. 

JK and I talked a lot about what had changed during the week, and why she seemed to have a sudden aversion to the bed after a few good days of sleeping in it.  Temperatures dropped during the week, and he thinks she was cold with the bed next to the wall on the outside of the room.  I agreed, and before bedtime last night, we relocated the bed to the inside wall, where her crib used to be.  Miraculously, she slept through the night last night.  I'm hoping that solved the problem, and that we'll get back into a good bedtime routine in her bed - instead of on the floor or in our bed!