big girl in the big girl bed

Big news this week - the big girl's big-girl bed finally arrived!  Yippee!  This was her, not dressed for bed, the first time she saw it fully constructed and with its "Peppa Pig cubbers" on.  Very excited, as you can see!

Right now, she has not moved too far.  That's our bed right beside her.  We are working on getting her own room ready as a top priority, but couldn't put off getting the bed any longer and have so much other crap furniture dumped in our room (as a result of trying to improve elsewhere in the flat) that we're not able to move her any further away.  One day, one day... Soon?!  Ish?!

Caressing the covers.

The first night Dulcie slept in the new bed, she kept trying to abscond in with us, but I blocked all her attempts and she backed down quite quickly.  The second night, she just needed a quick hand-hold once or twice.  The third night (last night) she slept for over 11 hours without waking up once!  I honestly don't remember her ever doing that before, maybe once or twice in her life.  The signs are good!  Hopefully by the time we're ready to move her into her own room, she should be totally comfortable and settling herself easily.  In general, Dulcie's sleep has improved amazingly over the last couple of months, still not perfect, but SO MUCH BETTER than it had been.  I don't think it's any coincidence that her improved sleeping/settling happened at the same time as I finally stopped breast-feeding all together.  Dulcie wasn't really keen to give up her bedtime feed, but the time had definitely come and, after a few nights of having to talk her out of feeding, she quickly adjusted and seemed less manic/anxious somehow.  She soon started dropping off more quickly (though I'm still having to lie with her until she's asleep), waking up less often throughout the night and settling back down more quickly when she did.  All of this confirms to me that the time was right to stop feeding and stops me feeling sad that those days are done.  It's all good positive progress, right?

For ages Dulcie has had a penchant for tucking her toys in, so it's very exciting for her to be able to tuck a pal or two in beside her of an evening.  Kimo the Eskimo was given the honour of the first try.

Lying down happily and...

...off to sleep!

Yeah, it's not quite THAT easy, but it's still great and she looks so cute snoozing away in there, with her feet only about a third of the way down.  Aw.

I won't share the tale of the bed's construction.  Suffice to say, two of our family cried and the third swore a lot.  Hey, it's made now...  I just hope we don't have to take it apart to move it to the other room!  Ha ha!