Fields of Green: Big Girl Bed

When I was about five, my parents bought my little sister and I a bunk bed. Not just any bunk bed, no; my parents outdid themselves. They got us a bunk bed with a slide.

I have a lot of fond memories growing up in that bunk bed. Memories of passing stuffed animals back and forth with my sister, of being the coolest kids ever when other kids came over to play, of mastering the way to lean back and lift my feet so I could slide down super fast. It really was a special bed and when circumstances forced me to recently face the facts and finally take my 2.5-year-old out of her crib, I knew we had to get something with a slide.

I'd actually been on the lookout for the perfect bed for quite awhile. We live in an averagely-small townhouse, and while I find that the rooms have plenty of space, we're a little tight on storgage space. I'd seen some cool lofted toddler beds out there and knew that the underneath area would make a great place for playing and storing toys if we could find one at a reasonable price. Better yet, I knew that Ikea used to make a lofted toddler bed with a slide, and I knew that slide could easily make me the greatest mom ever. So, I'd been scouring Craigslist for months.

Finally, in early April (ahem...blog, much?), with morning sickness ruining my life, I wanted my baby in a big girl bed. I wanted to be able to lie in bed with her and cuddle, and most of all? I wanted her to be able to get out of bed by herself and come to my bed in the mornings so I didn't have to get up right away. Selfish reason, I know, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do when it comes to morning sickness. I think this was the only upside to morning sickness because I have a feeling that without it would I would have kept my child in a crib until she left for college, trying to convince myself that she is still my baby.

So we got serious. And I found the bed. It was $200, a bit more than I wanted to spend, but it came with a mattress and we've spent basically nothing on furniture so far for our child so we decided it was worth it. After much stressing over measurements, we decided that the bed just might fit and traipsed off north of Baltimore, over an hour and a half away, to get it.

My parents had taken the baby (do I have to call her a big girl now?) for a couple of nights so it was a perfect time to get everything set up and organized. I only cried approximately 12390 times.

Breaking down the crib. My heart hurts even remembering.

Set up, but missing curtains for the underneath part of the bed.
It's cluttered looking, I know, but it will get there!

Already changed this back around!

We didn't get it completely finished that day (actually, it still isn't completely finished...having morning sickness all day every day isn't very conducive to sewing curtains and fabric covering white ply board...) but it was set up just enough to do a grand reveal. The only sad part to me was that we lost space to keep my beloved little antique armoir in there. That was hard to take out. But it was worth it when she saw her bed for the first time.

(*Note: In the following videos, we made a huge parenting error. We still had her window open when she was trying out the slide for the first time. Ugh, it just makes me shudder to even think about it. But, yes, we know the window can never be open more than a crack now that she has a slide right by it and hasn't been since!)

We prepped her by telling her that we had a huge surprise waiting for her in her room. She looked up at me excitedly and asked, "Did our new baby come?!" Oh, my love! Not for many, many more months sweet thing.

Girlfriend loves her new bed. And my heart fell in love with the whole concept not only when I saw her eyes dancing with delight over the slide, but also the next morning when, those same eyes full of big-girl pride peered over the side of my bed and patted the mattress to get my attention. She does that every morning now. We have a gate at the top of the stairs and keep the office and bathroom doors closed and our bedroom door open. In spite of no longer using the baby monitor and noise machines going in both rooms, my supermom sonar wakes me up when I hear her little feet on her slide. She brings her favorite blanket and tiptoes into our room and climbs into Daddy's spot, who is already off to work. We cuddle and watch cartoons and Daddy leaves us drinks and snacks so I can wake up slowly.
Apart from, well, the constantly feeling of needing to barf, it's pretty blissful.

The only downside to all this is that she has been waking up about an hour earlier than she used to. Either she always woke that early and just stayed quiet in her bed or something about the new situation has her excited to get up. That, or she's waking up because she needs to potty. She's only in a diaper at night, so I'm thinking it's the last one. Suggestions welcome if you have them!