26 Aug 2014

The Big Girl Bed

Hannah s bed 3For some reason I have lucked out not once, but twice, with children who loved their cribs and never bothered trying to climb out of them.  It's amazing.  It's also part of the reason why we just moved Hannah out of her crib and into a toddler bed a month after her third birthday.  We moved Jayce out of his crib when I was 7 months pregnant with Hannah, just before he turned 3, and what persuaded me/us to finally move Hannah was our impending vacation.  We would be staying at several different places over the course of the trip, and she was too big for a pack n play, so she needed to be bed-ready.
Hannah s bed 1The only problem was that we waited until the week before our trip.  I KNOW, I know, terrible timing and not a lot of cushion in case we had trouble.  But we had incredibly busy and stressful weeks (months?) leading up to the trip and it just didn't work out to switch everything around until that week, so that is what we did.
Hannah s bed 2
Hannah normally falls asleep for naps pretty quickly after I've put her down, but those first few days took her about an hour of fidgeting (and realizing that she could get up if she wanted to) before she eventually drifted off to sleep.  Bedtimes weren't a huge problem, just a little bit of fussing around with her babies in their bed and the usual chatting with her brother.  But I think that Jayce being in the room distracted her from just getting up and playing, particularly since he is great about going to sleep himself.  It only took about 3 days and she had it.  
Hannah s bed 4Of course on the day I took these pictures I woke her up with my camera.  Silly mom, messing with a sleeping child like that!  (You can tell that it was a warm July afternoon, with her sweaty bed head, the little peanut!)  So I let her get up and she went in Chelsea's room to hang out.
Hannah s bed 5
Hannah s bed 7Hannah s bed 6It turns out that our good luck extended to our vacation, because over the course of our trip we stayed in eight different places, (eight!) and she slept awesome in seven out of eight of those places.  She even napped almost every day despite that Jayce often wasn't napping with her.  I was amazed.  It obviously helped that they were completely worn out most days, playing in new places with new people, and the first week were getting over the jet lag and our horrible 27 hour journey to Florida.  But still, she napped!
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It turns out that I did all of that worrying for nothing, because she slept just fine in all of those big girl bed scenarios.  She didn't get out of bed against our wishes, she didn't fall onto any floors, didn't have any accidents, and didn't seem too bothered by any of it.  And her sleeping in a crib might as well have been a year ago. 
Friday morning 52

3 comments:

  1. I love that you waited til after 3. That is our plan with our youngest. She just turned two this month and loves her crib. She has a little brother coming in January but we decided to find another crib versuses moving her to a bed. We are hoping if we wait the transition will go much more smoothly. Sounds like that's how it went for you!

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  2. i had a similar situation. my daughter never climbed out of her crib and she slept so well i didn't want to mess that up. she was a little over 3 when she transitioned and she loves her big girl bed! so glad hannah took to it like a pro. amazing that 8 different beds didn't phase her--amazing!

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  3. She's so sweet! We did the same with our oldest - put him in a bed a little before he turned three because I was pregnant. He did fine - but I'm still holding off on taking his sister out as long as I can. She makes me nervous...ha!

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