Tuesday, March 21, 2006

I didn't finish that last post. There was supposed to be text with it, but blogger went down, and then last night there were all sorts of baby emergencies. You know how babies are.

Claire Helen sleeps in a big girl bed! The transition went so much more smoothly than I ever thought it would. To be honest, I expected about 3 months of nobody sleeping. I had always intended to keep Claire Helen in her crib until she went away to college, if I could get away with it, and the recent advent of incredible climbing ability thwarted my sleeping plans significantly. Now how am I supposed to keep her from sneaking out as a teenager?

Two weeks ago I found her with one leg slung over the top of her crib railing, so we decided to order a big girl bed before she fell on her head. We spent all week talking up the big girl bed, so that by the time it came in last Thursday she was practically apoplectic with glee when I told her the boxes at the door were the long talked about bed. "Big! Girl! Bed! BIGGIRLBED! Big! Girl! Bed!", she'd squeal, while spinning around and trying to simulaneously hug the box. She and I put it together, and that night we did the normal routine and started silent returns.* Unfortunately she caught a stomach bug and barfed all night starting about an hour into the returns (oh so cute!** She'd come to her door and then try crawling or scooching on her butt or tiptoeing out to see what we'd do, and then runrunrun back to her bed laughing when she'd hear us coming to take her back), so, uh, we aborted and she slept with us. The next day by nap she was feeling better, so we tried again, and only had to take her back to her bed twice.

And that was it. All of it. Now she goes down immediately after the routine and stays there till the end of nap (when she comes to the top of the stairs and barks "Mommy! Up here! Mommy now up here!") or the morning, when she walks into our room (we all are upstairs, and she's across the hall from us), leans on the bed, and says "Mooooorning. Milk? Where is Si-Si?"

* This is where you take them back to their beds 3 times, explaining it's time for bed, and we stay there until morning. The third time you say you are going to take them back to their bed whenever they come out of their room and not say anything else until morning. You're not supposed to laugh, even when they do the Hokey Pokey from behind a mostly closed door, so I am very bad at them.

** Not the barfing. That was sad.

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