Guten Nacht, Sweet Emma!

I must say, the transition from crib to "big girl bed" was much easier than I thought. We tried removing one of the sides of her crib in preparation for this transition about a month ago. That was a failure. She would fall out of the bed, and we would end up finding her sleeping on the floor. We put the side back on and decided to postpone the transfer until now.

We're currently in the last leg of this pregnancy, so we HAD TO make the transition from crib to bed because we will be needing her crib sooner than later. We will be keeping the twins together in one crib for the first month or so, so it was imperative that we transitioned her in this time.

We got her bed on Friday, and Papa had it put together so she could "sleep" when she came home from pre-school. She loved it, and immediately climbed in and pulled the covers up over her and said, "Guten Nacht, Mama!". She invites all her "animal friends" to join her for her slumber parties and even "cooks" with her pots & pans from her play kitchen. At first I thought she would only think it's another "toy", but she did great the first night when we put her in there. The second night she did (either) fall out or get out around midnight, but Christian scouped her up and was able to put her back into bed for the remainder of the night. We thought for sure she would jump out of bed and start knocking on the door or yell, "Tuer auf!" (open the door!) when left alone, but my little 20 month old has yet again surprised me at how capable she is with new challenges.

She's cried a few times when we've put her down and she doesn't want to go to sleep yet...but has never left the bed. Yahoo!!

We were lucky with her & sleep from the beginning. She slept through the night (8 hours) starting at 5 weeks. We co-slept with her until she was about 2 months, at which point we moved her to the crib in her room and her sleep only improved. Then at 3 months when they put the body brace on her for the hip dysplasia we moved her crib into our room so she could sleep with us since we were worried she would roll over in her sleep while wearing the brace. Her sleep only improved with time, and by about 5 months she was easily sleeping 12 hours straight! I felt really blessed because we never had any help with her, and no family to "give us a break" for even an hour... the amount of time she slept (read: rest time she gave US) really enabled us to get ready for another day of our Energizer Bunny.

So, without further adieu, here is my baby in her new "big girl bed", and her animals, and her bedding that Mama handmade for her! What a doll, right??