January 16th, 2004

This morning, Kurt went into Sophia’s room, as he always does, to wake her up. She doesn’t like to be woken up and this goes better for all involved if it’s a gradual process. So as a first step he goes in and turns on the bathroom light and perhaps says something to her in a quiet voice. Five or ten minutes later he comes in and turns on her bedroom light, and if she seems ready begins to change and dress her, or else just speaks to her a little more. He tells her it’s time to get up and that sleep time is over and so forth. This morning he’d followed all those steps and she was wailing that she didn’t want to get up, so he left her for another couple mintues with all the lights on. On his return, he discovered that she’d climbed out of bed, turned off her bedroom light and gotten back into bed. This astonishes me and makes me giggle. She was determined not to get up.

This was all possible due to the fact that last week Sophia started using a big girl’s bed, which she can climb into and out of by herself. We bought two mattresses, in anticipation of getting a bunk bed a couple of years down the road, and stacked them and lo! bed. We had looked at several children’s beds, and it just seemed like they were too tall for her. Sophia is not exactly physically adventurous and she is easily intimidated by having to climb. We wanted her bed to be a comforting and comfortable place. It worked beyond our wildest expectations. She loves her bed. Every time she walks into her room she shouts “Look! It’s Sophia’s big girl’s bed,” takes a running start and then leaps up onto it. She tells me “C’mon, mama, let’s get on Sophia’s big girl’s bed!” and I go over there and join her. She starts jumping up and down excitedly. For a couple of days she kept telling Kurt and myself to jump up and down on it as well, but we insisted to her that we were too big to jump on her bed, so now she says “Mama jump on the bed!” followed by a sly smile and, “Naaaaaaaaah, it’s too big for mama!”

Part of what made moving her to a regular bed so easy is that while she was at Kurt’s parents over Christmas she slept in a regular bed with Kelly every night. She loved that and was so proud of herself for sleeping in a big bed and we celebrated it, of course.

The first weekend she slept in the bed (we set it up her for on Thursday night of last week), she fell out of it, but since it’s just two mattresses and the floor is not far, she didn’t really hurt herself. Kurt went in to see about her because she was crying. She said she’d fallen out and Kurt asked her if she wanted him to put her back in the bed and she said yes. She’d walked around to the end of the bed where her stepstool was, so he thinks maybe she was in the process of climbing back in by herself when he came in (not that she needs the stepstool to get on it, she just uses it sometimes when she’s not feeling as confident). She went right back into the bed and right back to sleep, so the inevitable fall has already come and no trauma resulted. We are pleased that she has done so well and that no railings or anything appear to be needed.

This past weekend we were treated to Sophia coming into our room as soon as she’d woken up. In the past she has just called to us or started talking or even just lain quietly until we’ve gone to get her out of the crib. It’s really sweet to see her come running in, carrying one of her animals. On one of the days she climbed into bed with me and snuggled up to me. She told me she’d slept in her big girl bed. I asked her if she liked it and she said she had. She put her feet up against my skin and I told her that her feet were cold. She told me yes, because she’d been playing in the snow, and that then she’d seen rudolph the red-nosed reindeer at grandma’s. I think she must have been retelling her dreams to me, which I find really exciting. I can’t wait to hear more of her night time adventures.

Her transition to a regular bed meets half of our requirements for her before the baby comes. We wanted the crib free for the baby, so we wanted her in a regular bed. The other thing we want is for her to be potty trained and out of diapers. That’s going less well. She understands the procedure and knows when she needs to go, but she’s just not terribly willing to do it. We’ve been indulgent and patient with her so far, but I’m not sure how long that’s going to last.

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