Big Girl Bed

After rearranging the older girls' room yesterday, today was Molly's turn to get a mini room makeover. This meant finally graduating from a crib to a "big girl" bed. I have been struggling with this decision for a few months now. On the one hand, I have been blessed to never have had ANY of my children even attempt to climb out of their cribs. So we have always just moved them when we felt they were ready. Molly has never expressed unhappiness with her crib nor has she made noises of wanting a real bed. However, on the other side, I don't want her to get so old that she is all too aware of her new found freedom and we have major issues keeping her in bed at night.

So ultimately today became the day to kick start this experiment with Molly. After naps, I took the railing off of one side of her crib and put up a bed rail. She was SO excited. She played in her room for an hour after I was done, randomly climbing into her bed and then getting right back out again. This made me slightly nervous about how tonight would go. But we did our same bedtime routine and she got into her bed and settled in just fine. We said prayers, I kissed her goodnight... and that was it. She never got up. She never made noises of any kind. She just fell asleep. I'm not naive enough to think it will always be this easy - she's bound to eventually figure out she can get up if she wants to - but this was as successful a first night as I could have hoped for. She really is a big girl now.

sitting in her bed - first her "nice" picture...

... followed by her "silly" one (it was also vitally important that both Rapunzels were present in both pictures)