I've noticed lately, that, without realizing it, I under-estimate Sophi, a lot. This really makes me feel pretty crappy. I mean, it makes me happy and so so proud when she exceeds my expectations of her, but for a second, I feel like a pretty bad mom for not giving her the benefit of a doubt. Let me just give the two most recent examples.
Bears.
I was doing an early morning search on Amazon one morning, trying to look for a specific Melissa & Doug alphabet puzzle, when I found the M&D Wooden Bear Family Dress Up Puzzle. At first, I wasn't going to get it. I just knew that Sophi wouldn't be into it right now. She hardly pays attention to puzzles and I thought that this would just be too involved, that she would dump the pieces all over the floor, play with them for 5 minutes and then move on. So, I just added it to her Amazon wish list and added the alphabet and the number puzzles, into my cart, because those were the ones I knew she would love.
I try really hard not to be a compulsive shopper, so I sat with those items in my cart for a couple of days before deciding to go ahead and give the bears a shot. It was only $12 and she would eventually like it, right??
The day that the puzzles came, the UPS man rang the doorbell during nap time {like always...grrrr} and I rushed to open the box of goodies. I like to have new stuff opened and displayed on the coffee table when she wakes up from her nap. I do this even when we are just doing a tot school activity. I love to let her come out and discover whatever is out for her to play with. That time of day is always best, also, because she is fresh from her nap and there's not much of a chance of the crank-a-pottomus showing it's ugly head. Anyway, so she wakes up and she immediately goes to the number puzzle. We went over a few numbers and she was over it. Then, she spotted the bears! She RAN over to the other side of the table and then, like magic, she was glued to those bears! She played with them for THREE hours, when I had to pull her away for dinner, and then she was right back on them again after dinner. The child is obsessed with the puzzle. I love that she can create stories with the different outfits and facial expressions of the Mama, Papa, and Baby bear. She is also learning to recognize the different expressions and their meanings. If you have a toddler at home, I cannot recommend this puzzle enough. By the way, she has hardly touched the two puzzles that I was so sure she would love. Oh well!
Big.Girl.BED!
This one makes me haz a sad. Ok, well, really it makes me very proud, but sad in that "Wahh! My baby is growing up!", kind of way. I have been asking Sophi for months if she is ready for her big girl bed {we bought the bedding like two months ago}, and her answer has always been a resounding "NO! I want CRIB!" This weekend, without Mitch on my side, I decided to take matters into my own hands. This girl has got to learn how to sleep in a bed that is not a crib. So, early Saturday morning, I disassembled her crib, took the front rail off, put her new bedding on and prepared myself for the hell that was going to come once she realized that she wasn't confined anymore!
I positioned myself in the corner of her room, called her in for the surprise, and this is what happened:
...not exactly the reaction I was hoping for.
She was terrified. Wouldn't even come into her room! I thought for a second about what I could do to get her comfortable enough to at least come sit and try it out. So, I hopped in the bed and slowly coaxed her into coming in with me. I showed her how excited her "babies" were to be in a big bed, I showed her how she could scoot to the edge and dangle her feet off, and best of all, how she could get in and out all by herself! After a few minutes, we couldn't get her out of that bed! We played in it most of the morning.
Then came the first true test. Nap time. We held our breath and crossed our fingers when we put her down. Not only did she go down without a single problem, she slept for TWO HOURS! We actually ended up going in a waking her up because it was 4:00 and we knew that if she slept longer, she wouldn't go to bed that night. You want to talk about one seriously proud mama?! Yeah, I'm that girl. All afternoon I just kept saying, "I can't believe Sophi slept in her big girl bed!".
That night, she begged to get into her "big bed" after story time. She ran over and jumped in without even the first request for a hug or a kiss goodnight! She slept straight through the night and woke up around 7:30 the next morning, and instead of immediately crying out for me, she just laid there in her bed and talked and sang songs and played with her babies until almost 8:00. WOW! I sold my kid short. We didn't think she was ready at all for this transition. I thought for sure that we would be putting the front rail back up on her crib before bed Saturday night. Boy were we WRONG. She's pretty cool. And she LOVES her big girl bed! I've also taken like, 100 pictures of her sleeping in her bed. Maybe I'm just a little proud of our girl!
Next stop, POTTY LEARNING!
Have you recently gone through any big transitions with your littles? Which ones? How did you/your little handle the transition?
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