Big Girl Bed Update

So, last night, I tucked a sleeping Peeper into her Big Girl Bed around 11 pm, Shrike went to bed (all alone!) at about 1 am and joined her (all alone! just us!) about 2 am.

Not a peep from Peeper until about 4 am.

When I went to her, she was crying for "goody on the couch" and I figured I might as well take her there, rather than let her get any more upset and associate it with the Big Girl Bed, so we "watched" (slept in front of) The Wizard of Oz until I woke up and moved us into the big bed with Shrike around 5:30 am.

Peeper started stirring and nursing around 9 am, and sure enough, around 9:15, she said "I want to get up," checked the clock, and said, "Oh! Look at dat! It turned into a nine! What dat on dere?"

I explained the wake-up time note, and we got up to face our day.

Once she was fully awake, I told her that she'd spent "HALF the night!" in her Big Girl Bed, and "Wow, I bet you're proud of yourself!" and she was just beaming.

I asked her if she'd like to go pick out some "Special Big Girl Sheets" and she thought that sounded like a dandy idea. And then we got an email coupon from Kohl's for 15% off everything - and bedding is on sale, up to 55% off. Woo hoo!

When we actually got to the store, she wasn't quite so excited about picking out the bedding, though.

I think it was a combination of an overwhelming variety of choices and the import of the whole situation.

We reassured her that she only has to sleep in it when she wants to, and she didn't have to decide today.

We thought she'd made a choice, but it turned out that she wanted the littel demo bed, not the bedding that was on it.

So, we ended up at Target, where we started with a coffee and cakepop, of course, and then finally made a decision - after a bit of a meltdown, which ended with me pulling her out of the cart, plopping down in the middle of an aisle, and nursing her back into some semblance of reason.

We are mixing our black and white animal metaphors a bit, but I thought she made a great choice to fit in with her existing decor.

Here a hint - she is wearing the little bag that the sheets came in.

After Target, we grabbed some lunch at took her over to Shrike's parents' house. They're at the beach, but our friend MommyA and ToddlerJ are house/dogsitting, and the afternoon/evening, they were Peeper-sitting, too, while we drove way farther than should be necessary to see The Help with some MOMS Club friends.

If you've not read this book and seen this movie, you must do both. Just take plenty of tissues.

We checked in with them after the movie, and she was doing fine, so we went to dinner, and by the time we got home, it had been six hours!

That's one of Peeper's longer stretches away from us (all the others have been for doctor's appointments), the first time she's stayed with MommyA, and the first time we've actually paid for babysitting.

Two out of three of those things were reasons to celebrate.

(If you'll remember, MommyA has paid us to babysit, so of course, we paid her the same rate.)

After all that, we came home and made up the Big Girl Bed with the new sheets, and here it is!

She doesn't really use a pillow at this point, so I'm not sure whether to look for a toddler-sized one, or just put a fullsize one on there, for me.

And here she is, all tucked in, around ten o'clock this evening, after nursing down in the chair. (The lights are off, and her panda nightlight - retrieved from where it was hidden when she learned to walk and started messing with it - is turned on. It just looks all lit up because of the flash.) We'll see how long it lasts.

And I'm worn out, so I think I'll go join my wife in the big bed, all by ourselves, for a little while!