THE BIG BOY BED

I could not be happier about this post...Colin is officially sleeping in his awesome new big boy bed!! WOW. I feel like a new woman, let me tell you!! Here is the long and short of it:

Jer was off on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. He went ahead and broke down the crib and converted it into the full size bed on Wednesday evening. I, of course, was an emotional wreck about it. I sat in his room for a good while trying to memorize what it looked like with his crib there. Since Colin has not slept in the crib for more than a month now, it was not as hard as it probably would have been otherwise. I had already started the letting go process. :-) Anyway, the mattress set was going to be delivered on Thursday afternoon, so we started really hyping things up on Wednesday. On Thursday, we started moving the furniture around and made a big deal of Colin "helping". We had to move his armoire into the guest room because it turns out that the full size bed is HUGE. It is a beautiful piece of furniture and I see now why it was so damn expensive! It is far bigger than I thought it would be. We decided to switch the office and guest bedroom around as well, which made the whole morning into a huge production. Since the guest room will belong to baby number two one of these days, we wanted the kids to have the two rooms that don't share a wall with our bedroom. After spending the last month sleeping with Colin in that room, I found out the hard way that you can hear every noise made in our bedroom. We ended up having to turn off the television and whispering whenever Colin was asleep. NOT great. Therefore, we decided to switch everything around. I think the new setup looks fantastic and the armoire goes beautifully in the guest room. Colin can have it back when we move into a bigger house one of these years! The mattress arrived at noon and we immediately put the sheets on and set it up. Colin immediately adored it and I knew instantly that we had made the right decision. He was bounding up and down on the bed, grinning from ear to ear. We spent extra time "getting cozy", explored all the new bedding and then read a few books together. It was not long after that Colin fell asleep for his first nap! It went off without a hitch!! When he woke up, he simply sat up in bed and called for us. I took him to the Twilight concert at The Square in Denton that night to make sure he was extra worn out for bedtime. That worked...he was so tired from dancing and playing that he fell right into bed. I get up in the bed with him and read a story and sing his favorite songs. When he gets still and almost asleep, I weasel back out of the bed and then pull the covers over him. And then...TADA!!!!...he slept through the night! WITHOUT ME! IN HIS OWN BED!!! Oh man, it was a beautiful thing! Now, I was up every two hours all night long and got zero sleep because I was so worried. Thank God we have a video monitor or I would have been sneaking in there every two seconds! But my worries were unfounded and all went well. He started to cry one time, but put himself back to sleep. It was flawless. I am so happy that we made the decision to go ahead with the big bed. That is what he wanted...out of the crib and up off the floor in a nice bed. I am so happy that I can't put it into words!!

Today, he took a brilliant two hour nap after we spent all morning at the pool. He likes to put himself under the covers and pull them up to his chin, which is beyond adorable. He went to sleep easily and slept great. Tonight we had an absolute blast at Life's A Beach with some of our wonderful friends. Colin spent hours running after other kids and making sand castles and I spent time nursing a margarita and enjoying the company, which was wonderful. We got home a bit later than I had planned, so Colin did not get to sleep until almost 10pm, which is way too late. I hope that doesn't ruin our good run! Hopefully he will have another good night of sleep. After his quick bath, he jumped right into bed and pulled the covers up! I can't tell you how much joy it brings me to see him happy about this! We still have to rearrange artwork now that we moved the layout of the room and I need to get a stool that he can use if he tries to get down on his own, but besides that, we are all done! Here are a few shots from this morning when he woke up:

Playing and loving his new cool room!


Enzo, very pleased with the new bed. ;-)

This is just a view of the setup. If you fold the rails down, you can make the bed normally and it looks nice. We just need to get bedding that matches his current cabin/lodge themed room, but that can wait. The bear on the headboard "watches over him" while he sleeps and Colin thinks that is great. He kisses his nose good night. :-)

So there is the story of The Bed. I have no doubt that you will hear plenty about this in the future. :-)