The Big Girl Bed

Audrey has become the tallest 2 2/3 year old we know and has definitely outgrown her crib. This, at least, had been transformed with the front face off and a toddler rail on to contain our little thrasher! At 40 inches tall, however, it was time to make a change.

Audrey has had some "issues," shall we say, going to sleep lately. For the last two months we have had an almost nightly battle over the actual act of going to sleep. No resistance to starting the bedtime routine - it's just finishing it that is the rub. We're not talking a half hour or even an hour. We're talking lights out at 8 pm and sometimes she's still going at 11 or 11:30 when we're so bleary eyed we can't even keep up. Every night I cross my fingers that her new-found ability to keep herself awake will be taken over by sheer exhaustion, but to no avail. This is a MAJOR change for our formerly 12 hour straight sleeper who dropped off flawlessly at 7:45 every night for the last 2 years. I know, I know, I shouldn't reveal how good our utopia was before we lost it but it just makes it all the harder to swallow this sleep depriving pill.

We've tried everything. Scolding, praising, "silent return to bed" (damn that Supernanny), the newly instated "sleep chart" where we focus on all the tasks she does well instead of this one GIANT thing for which she has gone berzerk. Nothing seems to be cracking the blood pressure raising habit of staying awake for hours after going to bed. We've gated the doorway of her room so that at least if we really wanted to just let her go we could, but this goes against all that I've read when it comes to sleep. I'm not wanting to start the "mom and dad let me play as long as I want" habit so I decided that it was time to try getting a big girl bed that was fun enough to make her want to stay in it.

In storage is a beautiful solid maple twin frame that is an heirloom from Bill's family. I very much want to refinish this to show off the gorgeous wood and purchase a good mattress and box spring to last through the teen years. Since this is not in the cards right now we opted to find a good buy on an interim solution. Yesterday we braved IKEA with G-ma Pat to make the purchase. Oh, IKEA.... It was Pat's first visit into the labyrinth so it's always fun to watch first-timer's eyes start to slowly glaze over the longer you walk. (And seriously, you probably walk a couple of miles easily before you're done.) Audrey had a fantastic time getting to see G-ma and we were happy to share this with her.

The end result once we got home was a 2 hour furniture assembly/room rearranging session. Audrey is in heaven! She loves the bed, of course, but on our first forray into how it would change the night-time routine we discovered that the massive change of the room alone was enough to entertain any kid for 2 1/2 hours. She finally caved at 10:30 pm.

Let's hope the novelty wears off and the desire for more stickers takes over so that we can fill up that pesky little "stay in bed" column on our sleep chart.