Another milestone

Our plan from the beginning of James' pregnancy had been to keep Charlotte in her crib as long as we could.  She was a great sleeper who wasn't trying to get out of her crib and we didn't want to mess things up with a new baby coming -- I couldn't fathom having to deal with sleep issues in two children instead of one!  Plus, Charlotte had broken a lot of teeth on her crib so we didn't want to give James a half-eaten crib. :)

However, we failed to think of the ramifications of having a c-section...namely that I would be instructed to not lift Charlotte for six weeks and definitely wouldn't be able to lift her out of her crib by myself for a week or two at least.  So in early July we ordered bed rails with plans to put them on Charlotte's big girl bed and then see if we had any time between potty training and James' arrival to try it out.

A week into potty training (once it seemed like Charlotte had the basics pretty much down) we spent a Saturday morning putting the rails on her bed.  And off-handedly we asked her if she wanted to take her nap in it.  She was real unsure about it and kept answering "I don't know...".  I think she wasn't sure what the "correct" answer was and wasn't sure if she really wanted to sleep in it or not.  So we encouraged her to try it for her nap.  We knew we could go back to the crib if it was a disaster but felt like she would enjoy the big bed if she gave it a chance.

We set down quite a few rules (No jumping. No standing. No getting down.) and put her in the bed and went downstairs to basically watch her on the monitor for the full three hours to see how it went.  She definitely stayed awake longer than usual but eventually went to sleep and when we went up to get her at 3 this is how we found her...

She ended up sleeping great!  For a week or so we would tell her that if she got down out of the bed then she'd have to go back to her crib and she quickly decided that she did NOT want to do that!  We also had to add a few new rules: No pulling on the curtains and no forward rolls.  But for the most part she has done great with this transition!  The first few weeks she would want us to repeat the rules to her before every bedtime (having such a rule follower has a lot of perks!) but now we only repeat them if she's sleeping in a new bed.

She has slept in her big girl bed at Memma and Papa's with no problems since then and is so excited to get to Tuscaloosa and get to sleep in her big girl bunk beds!  She is very cognizant to ask before getting out of the bed (which was an initial specification) and would get upset if we answered anything other than "You may" which apparently is what I had answered to her at the beginning.  Jason gets a kick out of the fact that the stool that she's using to climb into and out of her bed is the same stool that I took to Tutwiler my freshman year to scale the heights of my raised bed!

We are very proud of our big girl and can't believe all that she accomplished in July this summer!  She seems so grown up now in a big girl bed with big girl underwear on!  She has taken it all in stride which is so impressive to us.  We can't see what she takes on next!