A couple of weeks ago Lily "Graduated" to a big girl bed. This we did out of fear that she would fall and hurt herself climbing out of bed in the middle of the night. But let me tell the story right. Andrew and I put Lily to bed, and I think he was studying and I was reading, when all of the sudden Lily's door opened! A moment later she walked down the hall, and saw me looking at her, so she smiled at me and said something cute like "ah done", to which I said, "Andrew, Lily must have climbed out of her crib!" He came up and we took Lily and put her back in bed and watched her climb right back out about 3 seconds later! That's our Lily, didn't even wait for us to leave the room. So what did I do next? Yup, ran for the camera. Then I put her back in bed again and waited to take pictures. (Does that make me a bad mom?) So I took the above picture, but Lily lost her balance a little and pitched forward. I lunged to catch her, and she only got a little bonk on the side of the crib, and didn't fall head first into the crib. But that was enough for Andrew and me. No more climbing out of bed. Immediately we started converting Lily's crib into a toddler bed. We finished about 45 minutes later, and Lily was pretty pleased with our handy work.
However, when we tried to get her to go to sleep, she didn't think she should have to stay there now that the barrier of the 4th crib wall was gone. We had to close her door all the way so she couldn't open it, and when she finally fell asleep, after screaming for a while, it was behind the door, and not on the bed at all. Andrew carried her to her bed where she slept the rest of the night, though, when we checked on her before we went to bed, this is how we found her. We put her all the way in bed again, and went to bed ourselves.
Then next night she fell asleep on the pillow that lies in front of her bed, instead of on the bed itself. Of course we put her in the bed again, where she slept through the night. She often does end up kind of kneeling off the bed like in the above picture, and we just move her back in place.
But the story does not end there. Remember Andrew's post last week about Lily putting herself to bed one night? Well, she does that almost every night now! We try to immediately follow her in and say bedtime prayers with her, but she almost always tells us when it's bedtime, instead of the other way around, and nap-time is similar. (Not quite so reliable, but it does happen). She knows when she is tired, and knows where to go when she is! We love this about her! It's so nice to have her just go into her room and lay down instead of fighting grumpily with us about going to bed.
Also, we are now leaving her pacifier on her bed so when she takes a nap or goes to bed it's there for her. She knows Paci's are for night-night, and it does not come out of the room. Although, often during the day I will notice things are a little too quiet, so I'll go check Lily's room, and there she will be, half-laying on her bed with the paci in her mouth. I call this a "paci break", like other people have a coffee break or a smoke break. No, I don't want to compare my child to a smoker, or and addict of any kind, but she'll have her little paci break, then she'll come out of her room without it, and continue to play happily. So, for now, I'm okay with it. Someday soon it will have to go to bed-time only, no breaks, and then we'll have to get rid of it completely, but we'll take baby steps. For now I just laugh at her cute little idiosyncrasies.
