The Big Girl Bed

Yes, our girl is growing up... She has her own bed! Phan and I have briefly talked about getting Beth a bed for a couple of weeks now and on Sunday, whilst we were at Chermside, we saw a toddler bed at Target which was kind of the catalyst that really got us seriously thinking about buying a bed for Beth. So we popped out to a homemaker centre and looked at a few bed places... found this bed, which I just adored (I just love the tulip cutouts in the bedhead), bought it and it was delivered yesterday. It just all happened so fast!

We spent yesterday afternoon putting the bed together (took us about 30 minutes, with Beth trying sooo hard to help us by holding the beams in place and trying to put the screws into the holes and things... she was so cute being a little helper!) She couldn't wait for the bed to be put together... and as soon as we had the mattress on the base she was climbing up on it and bouncing around on it. She got upset when we made her get off so we could put a waterproof mattress protector and a sheet on it... and the minute that was done she back and jumping up and down and getting us to tuck her in under the quilt and pretending to sleep for 10 seconds before getting up and bounding around on the bed again. It was a huge hit... I honestly thought we were going to have a lot of antics at bedtime, but it wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be... actually, it went fantastically. She only got out of bed once and wandered out to the lounge room about 15 minutes after we had tucked her in . After that, she just called out to me about a gazillion times and wanted me to keep tucking her in for about an hour as she was trying to fall asleep (which is really not unusual at all, because she does this normally, but only for about 30 minutes)... And then she finally fell asleep about 10:30pm... and slept straight through until 7:30am! Not a peep out of her all night! I am so happy and proud of her. When she woke up, she got out of bed and went outside her bedroom door and for some odd reason decided to stand and bang on the wall outside her room until I came said good morning to her... and there was the start of the day! :)

I'm feeling a bit nostalgic about this big step... She's really growing up now and she's just loving being a "big girl" and having her own bed... So happy the transition (so far) has gone without any issues. She's currently having her first afternoon nap in it and that's been drama-free... :)

This morning, we had a great swimming... Beth got to go in boat (well, a inflatable dingy)... She loves the song "here is the sea, they wavey sea, here is a boat and here is me"... so when I told her that was a boat and she was going to get to go in it she started singing that song to me... Whilst she was in the boat, she wasn't sure whether she liked it or not... I think she really wanted to like it, but she wasn't sure... but once she got out of it (there were 4 kids in a boat for a few minutes) she told me the "boat fun"... :) Too cute! We also did this experiment, where the instructor took each child, put them on a foam mat thing balanced on the edge of the water and had them sit on the mat and then fall backwards into the water to see what their reaction/response to falling into the water would be... and then the instructor pulls them out of the water. (I've explained this badly... I've made it sound worse than it is. The instructor is in control the whole time and it only lasts a few seconds and we had the option to not do it if we thought our child would be traumatised by it). Apparently, some kids just fall towards the bottom, others can't orient themselves, some spin around and swim towards the surface. Beth did pretty well... she managed to spin herself upright and try to swim towards the surface... and she didn't inhale too much water and wasn't even distressed about it at all (there were a few kids in the class that cried and were wondering what on earth had just happened). In fact later on, she sat on a ledge and tried to turn around and fall into the water backwards again by herself! She's a fruitcake! Anyway, it was an interesting process to see what a child's instinct is and also to reinforce that you can NEVER leave your kids in the water by themselves for any length of time...

Be back later with some photos... :)