Big Girl Bed-Part I

The first night:

So Saturday was a big work day for us. It was part "get the garage cleaned out" and part "get Samantha's bed out of the garage and in her room". We got the "garage cleaned out" part almost done, but didn't actually put the bed together until tonight. It was easy, and Sam had fun "building my bed". It is so nice to see a real bed in there and so weird to be in a house without a crib for the first time in 5 years. What I wasn't prepared for was Samantha's reaction!

She hated it! "I scared," she said. And I could see the fear in her eyes! But she's scared of a lot of things these days, and her cry is quite pathetic so we can't really go by that. I definitely knew that because of her resistance we would have to do it tonight or she would think she could do this every night. So here's what happened:

Plan A - I laid on her bed with her and read a book. She didn't want to lay down, and then cried as soon as the book was done. Mine and Dan's dinner was beeping, and I needed to rescue it (Dan was putting Timothy to bed) which made us ditch this plan...

Plan B - Give her benadryl, fill her belly, and make her so sleepy she can't resist the bed. I honestly can't believe I gave my daughter benadryl for this, but I've done way worse things as a mother so why obsess about that one! She ate with Dan and me (we were eating late because of putting the bed together, so we had already fed the kids). Timothy came downstairs to see what the "Sam out of bed" party was all about. With Timothy awake we moved on to the next plan...

Plan C - Do our bedtime routine on Sam's bed. Instead of reading 3 books, we read 1, but the goal was to mimic what we normally do on Timothy's bed. She asked to go to his bed, but we explained that because she had a big girl bed too we could read books there. She got to pick it out, but I made her lay down before I would read it. [Note: Big brothers are THE cutest. Timothy laid down by Samantha and immediately said, "It's gonna be okay, Sam."] We finished the book, Dan and I kissed her swiftly, turned off the light, and said "night night". By the time we got to the door she was standing on her bed, tears streaming down her face, crying "up, up". We both said, "lay down so you don't get hurt", and closed the door!

How evil are we? I'm a total "let your child cry" momma, but it is SO much easier when they are babies and when they aren't emotional. Timothy's only emotion was anger at that age, so it was hard to feel sorry for him. I totally felt like we just scarred Samantha for life! Dan and I stared at each other outside the door wondering how long we would really allow the crying to go on. For about 10 seconds (seriously, maybe not even that long) we heard a tortured cry of someone truly broken-hearted and maybe buried into her pillow because it seemed pretty muffled. And then silence-we haven't heard another sound since.

I honestly didn't prep myself for this at all. She has always loved going to sleep. Plus, she loves getting up and down "Bubba's bed" and our bed. It never even dawned on me that she would fight it. Hopefully, tonight was the worst of it!