"Big Ghul Bay-ed"

Oh my how quickly they grow!

Now that she's 2 all of the sudden my little toddler is a "big g-uhl". We were worried a bit at the beginning of her first weeks as a 2 year old because she went through a 2 week phase where she flipped out every day when we'd take her to school. Like start wailing before we got out of the car to go in the school flipping out. She would hold her "G" the entire day and be extremely clingy and emotional. I mean it was a faucet of tears and "I hooold you momma!!" every. waking. second. She'd get out of the tub after bathtime and just cry and say "Hold you?", or refuse to sit on the potty in the morning cause she just wanted to lay on my shoulder, or half way through breakfast start crying and want me to take her out of her high chair and hold her.

I couldn't figure out if it was just that we'd had Christmas then her birthday and then all of the sudden life went back to normal where there aren't cookies and presents everyday (literally we had 2 Christmases and a birthday within 2 weeks) and she was adjusting. Or maybe after meeting her new baby cousin Leah she realized that mommy was going to have one too and she wouldn't be the center of attention? It was so unlike her and so off that there were a few times where I wondered if we should take her to the doctor lol!

Then- one day, she was just....over it. I'll chalk it up to a "mental leap" and hope that the rest of her brain growth spurts are less intense.

So about 2 weeks ago we decided since she seemed to be over the clingy phase (we didn't dare try to throw something new at her when she was in meltdown mode) we'd attempt the transition to the big girl bed. I'd had her new bedding for a month or 2 and had it sitting out in her room where she could see it and we could talk about how those were the pillows she got to have when we got her "big girl bed". So we put the bed together on a Saturday morning so her 1st "sleep" attempt could be a nap. I figured if it was a disaster I'd be awake anyway and we might even have time after to take it apart and put the crib back up lol.

So there we were at nap time. 1 twin bed, 1 bed rail, and a toddler who was really excited about her "BIG GHUL BAY-ED!!" She loved it. She loved it so much she decided to crawl around in it like a crazy person, jump on it like a trampoline, and stand up in it and try to pull her video monitor off the wall.

It took almost 2 hours of going in, reprimanding her, putting her in several timeouts, and 1 spanking. Finally she stayed still long enough to fall asleep. And that is only because she tried to climb out of bed and fell (on carpet with a fluffy rug on top of the carpet) and it scared the bejeezus out of her (and me!).

That was the 1st and (so far) only time she's tried getting out of bed without me or Daniel there. She has slept like a champ for her naps and nighttime every night since. She loves reading books before bed in her new bed, she adores that she finally gets a pillow and she likes to help mommy make the bed in the morning (I figure train them early right?).

So I figured we'll get the big bed down and maybe in May try to do a real potty train before baby brother arrives (a girl can dream about having only one kid in diapers at a time right?!?). Especially since she wakes up dry and goes potty every morning, we just haven't made a concentrated effort to be intentional about it yet.

Well- her teachers informed us that this week she's been going on the potty at school!! (And that's in addition to the morning and sometimes before bed pottys she does for us!)  So we think we'll try an attempt at real potty training sometime this month! Wish us luck!