Bedtime

Sometime last week Crystal was in a bad mood at bedtime and insisted on being sung to and stayed with all night until she fell asleep. (The problem is since mommy is the one who tucks her in, mommy, being tired, pregnant, and slightly low on patience these days, can only deal with it for so long before she gives up and just lets her whine in her crib/room and goes to bed.)
Anyway like I mentioned, last week she was being particularly insistent, and when Mommy left to go to bed for herself, Crystal started screaming. After listening to her whine for about five minutes in her room, it finally quieted down and we figured she'd fallen asleep. However, no more than thirty seconds later, we heard a huge THUD, followed by the sound of the doorknob to her room.
I jumped up and opened her door to see her standing innocently with her blanket in hand and a big smile on her face yelling "I did it! I did it!"
The moment I've been dreading since she was just an infant had arrived. She had learned to vault her body over the crib. To her credit, she's very talented. She looks like she had military training with the way she can launch herself over those bars.
So we went to Walmart a couple of days later to pick out a toddler bed, and we let her pick out her own bedding set to go with it. All her favorites were displayed in the bedding sets to choose from. Her three favorites in the display were Disney princesses, Micky mouse, and Elmo. We held all three out to her and asked her to make a choice. She deliberated for at least five minutes,(I'm not exaggerating) and after changing her mind a couple of times, went with Elmo. The smile on her face was ear to ear.
I wish you people could see her dancing and squealing around the room as she watched us set up her bed and Elmo bedding to go with it. These are the moments that make having kids so awesome. She was so happy. I wish I felt like dancing every time a little thing like new bedding came into my life. Here she is on her new Elmo bed with all her Elmo dolls piled on top of it....(her hair is in a ponytail, it's longer than that, I promise)

Yes...those Elmo dolls are all hers. It was no surprise that she settled for the Elmo bedding to match her obsession.

Since the switch she's actually done really well. We have to put a plastic safety knob on the door to keep her from coming out of her room after bedtime, but she only tried to come out once. It's been over a week now and we're all sleeping better than we thought we would. I thought the conversion would be much more scary than this, and I'm glad to say that she's been handling it wonderfully.