MILESTONE MAYHEM~ Big Girl Bed!!!

I had the day off yesterday. I haven't had my job for over a year yet, so when we got our paid time off for the new fiscal year, I didn't get as much as most other people- it's prorated. Rather than waste my time by taking a whole week off at a whack, I decided I would just tack an extra day on a couple of our long holiday weekends so it would feel almost like a whole vacation... This was one of those weekends :)

I spent most of the day cleaning and cooking, trying to get the house looking nice so that I didn't have to deal with it for the rest of the weekend and could just relax. Well, I was trying to avoid doing the mountain of dishes in my sink (we don't have a dishwasher... ugh) and got the idea to transition Ilyana's bed to a toddler bed with the rails. I just knew she would be so psyched to be a "big girl" in her bed.

Will and I had discussed this a couple of weeks ago and hadn't really come to a conclusion. We thought she was ready for it, but were worried about spending a week dragging her back to bed, trying to explain that it was night-night time. So we sort of skirted around the issue and never came to a conclusion. Yesterday, I finally took matters into my own hands and did it myself :) It took me a while, because I couldn't find the right allen wrench (the one I needed was an "L" shaped one, and all I had was one of the straight ones) but I managed in the end.

She was really excited about it, she kept running across the room and flopping herself onto the bed, laying in it and saying "night night" pretending it was bedtime... It was really cute. Well, then real bedtime rolls around, and we were a little nervous as to what would happen.

We put her in her bed a little early with the t.v. and explained that if she got up, we would turn the t.v. off. Well, she got right up, and off went the t.v. Then we decided we'd put the child gate up in her doorway, so if she got up she could play in her room but she couldn't run around like a maniac and be fully up. After we put up the gate, she cried for a couple of minutes... And then it went quiet. I walked by the door and saw her laying in her bed, drinking her sippy. Ten minutes later, this is what we found:

WHAT A BIG GIRL!!! I was soooo proud of her, and I was blown away by how easy it was. At least for this first night. I am sure we'll have a couple more nights of fussing, but overall it was not nearly as bad as I expected. She was out like a light by 8:30

Of course we had to go on a pic-taking spree... Here are a couple other cute ones of Bendy in her big-girl bed for the first night!

My little angel peanut. I can't even believe how fast time has flown by. It's a little bittersweet, all this growing up she's been doing lately- where did my BABY go? She's a little girl now, with her own opinions, her own moods and preferences and ideas. *sigh* People told me when she was born that it would fly by, I just had no idea it would be THIS fast.