Big girl bed

Pardon my typos today, friends. I haven't had a lot of sleep. Plus I had to do manual labor. And let's not forget the anxiety attacks. Those are draining.

Last night Laura (19 months!) became a crib escapee. Not coincidentally she also became a big-girl bed occupant.

Of course this happened when my husband was toiling late at the office.

It went down (and downhill) like this:

Around 7:30 I tucked Laura into her crib. Her favorite blanket was in a bleach wash. You don't want to know. Still, she commanded five books be read to her and then as is her custom she wanted to sleep with the books. I tucked her in with reading material and she chucked her not-favorite blanket out of the bed at me as I left the room. It was a warm night. I wasn't worried about her blanketless baby self.

Apparently she didn't go to sleep. The three "big girls" and I were downstairs reading and playing and in general winding down from the day when I heard the first soft thunk from above. A book dropped out of the crib. It was shortly followed by a louder ca-chug of, perhaps, a larger book being shed as she settled in for the night.

Nary a peep from Laura. I assumed (and you know what that means) she was snuggled up and snoring those sweet little baby snorts of sweetity sweetness.

I turned on my laptop to check up on a few of you. And that's when she snuck up behind me on intrepid but pudgy feet, carrying the book she'd liberated first.

"Hi, Mama!" Oh-so-proud of herself for plunging from behind crib bars to the hardwood floor. For manipulating the closed door of her bedroom. For navigating the super-steep wooden farmhouse stairs. Okay, I'm giving myself a little panic attack right there. The stairs.

After much ill-placed congratulations from her sisters, Laura made the very mature decision that she was ready for a big girl bed.

So that's how it was that I came to disassemble her crib without a proper goodbye and subsequently to assemble an antique iron big girl bed in its place. Much clapping and bouncing on mattress ensued. In all the uproar I forgot to put her favorite blanket in the dryer. No matter, she was happy as a clam in sand and soon (well, by 10:30 p.m.) snoring in actuality not just my imagination.

I settled all the girls into bed a mere two hours late and fell into my own bed. But not before also installing a baby gate. By midnight I was sound asleep. By 2 a.m. she was wide awake and screaming at the indignity of the baby gate. Luckily by then I had backup in the form of Daddy. Unluckily I still did not have a dry favorite blanket. So I spent the next hour downstairs drinking tea while her "bee" dried. At 3 or so I tucked it around her, and she's still sleeping as I type.

And that's how the babyhood of our last babies leaves us, friends. On tiptoe pudgy feet and with a small thud it was gone, leaving me unprepared but necessarily moving into big-girl mode.