Chapter closed

When we returned home from our little mini-vacation last week, it was 11:30 at night. Savannah was absolutely tuckered out, and so I immediately pulled her Dora jammies on and got ready to settle her in her crib for the night.

That's when the tears started flowing...the kind of crying that is borne of pure exhaustion, where once you start you can't stop. She sobbed and begged me to lie down beside her in the "big bed", the double bed that has always been in her room. While we were in Indiana, she slept in the bed with me and had gotten nice and spoiled with that setup, and now that we were home she couldn't understand why things had to change. So I told her she could sleep in the bed instead of the crib, but that she would be by herself.

She said ok. So I surrounded her with pillows and her 3 best friends -Pooh Bear, Pluto, and Minnie Mouse - and tiptoed out. I didn't hear a peep out of her all night.

I figured it was a passing thing that she would get out of her system. That she would be glad to get back to the familiar, scrunched space of her crib.

But no. Every night since then, she has let me know in no uncertain terms that she is "all done crib" and that she wants "only big bed".

Of course I knew that she would outgrow her crib eventually. I just didn't expect it to be now. I have been placing her in that crib for the past 32 months, every single night. A part of me held on to the fact that as long as she was in the crib, then she was still somehow a baby. Protected. Secure. And I could hold on to this stage a little longer. But the crib has remained empty for an entire week now, unless you count the times when she climbs into it and flops down headfirst, then starts jumping up and down like it's her own personal mini trampoline.

In a way I'm glad that she took it upon herself to move to the big girl bed, because she was getting a little too big for the crib...but only because she insisted on lying along the short end of the crib, with her head jammed against one side and her feet poking through the slats and up the wall on the other. Now in the mornings, my little early bird wakes up with the sun (far, far too early for my liking), gets herself out of bed, pads softly to my room, and says, "Mama?" Then I pull her into bed with me and if I'm lucky she'll go back to sleep for a few minutes. Sometimes I am not lucky, and instead of sleeping she entertains herself with kicking me in the ribs, interspersed with requests for bananas and milk.

And because I am a good mama, I roll over and pretend like I didn't hear her breakfast order being placed.

So another chapter, the crib era, has closed. Good thing these end-of-the-baby-stage things don't come all at once...I don't think I could handle it.