Lorelai's Big Girl Room

Matt and I have been talking for a while about what we wanted to do with Lorelai's room when it was time to move her from her crib to a bigger bed.  When we bought her crib, we decided to go ahead and spend the extra money to get her furniture that was really nice.  We also decided to buy her a crib that goes from a crib to a toddler bed and a full size bed.  That way, once we had it, we had everything we needed.

I knew that the time was coming quickly that she would no longer be sleeping in her crib.  I actually got in a kick that I wanted to get her some new furniture and use what she has for the next possible baby.  We did tons of furniture shopping.  We even went to Tallahasse for like 2 hours one Saturday because a big furniture store there was having a HUGE sale.  And we just couldn't decide on anything so we gave up and concluded that we would just talk about it later.  Our plan was to keep her in her crib until I was home for summer break (about the middle of May) so that it wouldn't matter if she was up all night, had problems, kept getting out, etc.  We also decided to that we didn't want to transition to a toddler bed - we just wanted to go ahead and put her in a big bed, regardless of if we kept what we had or bought her something new.


Boy, did she have another plan for us!  We started having MAJOR sleep issues.  I mean HORRIBLE sleep issues.  We have done babywise since she was 2 weeks old.  And while we've never been super hardcore about it, her sleeping situation has always been a different situation.  We have definitely been hardcore about that.  She has been sleeping in her room, in her bed, in the dark since she was 7 weeks old.  She has never slept in our bed with us.  We stopped rocking her to sleep when she was about 4 months old.  Super hard core. 


Ha. 


It was if none of this had never happened.  She screamed for hours on end at bed time.  Woke up at the slighestest noise.  Woke several times in the night screamingbloodymurderatthetopofherlungsandscaringushalftodeath.  Stayed up in the middle of the night for HOURS on end, hysterical if we left her room.  It was awful.  We have only had to deal with this one other time when she was about 18 months old, right after she jumped/fell/climbed out of her crib (the one and only time that happened).  But this was even worse than that.  She cried so hard one night that she threw up.  Not cool.  But it was also different this time.  She wasn't just being disobedient or not wanting to go to sleep - she was terrified.  Scared.  Petrified.  How do I know?  She tells us!  "Mommy, scared!" 


To make a long story short - we thought maybe it was her crib that had something to do with it.  So in one whole day, we changed her room from a baby room to a big girl room.  Bought the whole sha-bang in one day.  This did make one important decision for us: she was keeping the furniture she had.  I've been talking about doing her room in owls for about 6 months now.  It's even where I got the idea for her owl theme birthday party.  We ended up sticking to that, and I absolutely LOVE her new room!  Here's our finished product on her big girl room!

She loves her bed when it's time to play.  She'll play on it for hours.  She loves to talk about her big girl bed.  And she is sleeping in it every night.  She is also VERY good at staying in her bed until we come to get her out - no crazy visits to our room in the middle of the night.  The sleep issues are still there.  They're better - but they're still there.  We're slowly working on them, praying for her, and hoping that this phase will pass quickly.