Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The big girl bed...

When last I updated the status of the big girl bed, Madelyn was doing pretty well although anxious about the change.  Then things took a dramatic turn for the worse.   Saturday through Tuesday night Madelyn spent both several hours at bedtime and several hours in the middle of the night when she woke up expressing her unhappiness with the situation.  Madelyn's demands were that mommy, daddy, or both should sleep on the floor in her room.  We didn't, but it was exhausting and I was thinking that this was going to be pretty terrible if we were dealing both with her and a newborn.

Then, the painter came to paint our living room and dining room and we ended up staying at my parents house until today.  Madelyn was back to sleeping in a crib at my parents house but she was still pretty determined that she needed mommy and/or daddy to stay with her all night.  However, the screaming at bedtime did go down and the middle of the might was much better.

Tonight, Madelyn has a cold and a fever and I put her in her big girl bed anyway. She protested, but then confirmed that mommy and daddy would be across the hall and it appears that she went to sleep without too much fuss.  How will the middle of the night go?  That remains to be seen.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

The List - Update :)

Now there are only 3 weeks (and a couple of days) before the baby comes...oh my...

The good news is that progress has been made on the list.  Realistically, I don't think everything is going to get done, but it is good to have goals...

Item #1: New Shades for the Sun Room
We are making progress...all 7 shades have been cut and are in some state of being sown.  Some are really close to done, some are not as close to done.  Of course, after the sewing then there is the stringing of the shades and the installing...well, we'll see what happens.

Item #2: Get a big girl bed for Madelyn and move her into it
As a refresher, this is the bed we got from Ikea...I still need to actually take pictures of it in her room with the quilt Aunt Becci made for her.


Last night, Madelyn told us that she wanted to sleep in her big girl bed.  The last time we tried to get her to sleep in there it did not go well and she ended up in the crib.  However, last night it was her idea and since our goal is to get her sleeping in it we decided to give it a try.  She really wanted me to stay in the room with her, which I agreed to.  However, after about 30 minutes of lying down with her in the bed and her talking to me, I told her that I would stay in her room but in the rocking chair, not in the bed with her.  5 minutes later she was fast asleep.  She did come find us in our room at about 1:45am, but Justin took her back to bed and she slept the rest of the night in her bed without incident.  Tonight she is currently sleeping in her bed.  I am currently cautiously optimistic that this transition is going ok.


Item #3: Extra storage in the kids room...yikes!
We have made more progress on this front.  The closet is anchored to the wall (thanks Dad and Justin!),  most of the inside pieces are installed (we may or may not have initially gotten the wrong size shelves), and we have gotten the doors.  This has been a much more multi-step process than I had originally envisioned, but at least we are making progress.
This is the PAX storage system from Ikea
Item #4: Childproofing the kids room BEFORE Madelyn actually starts sleeping in her big girl bed
I am pretty sure this is done...just in time :)  Who knows what we'll discover now that she is free to roam her room at night.

Item #5: Fixing/Removing the shower doors in the bathroom
DONE!!!! They are gone! I am so happy!

Item #6: Repaint the Living/Dining Room
This is scheduled for Monday.  Sometime before then we need to pick out and purchase paint and clear everything off of and away from the walls.  We've got some time...

Item #7: General cleaning out/organizing of closets and other storage in the house to make things easier once the baby comes
I cleaned out and reorganized the linen closet and the under the bed storage in the kids room.  I am going to count this as a partially filled goal :)
Here is my beautifully organized closet...who knows how long this will last.
At least we've made progress :)

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Goodbye Pacifiers...

It was time for the pacifiers to make an exit from Madelyn's life.  Justin and I agreed that was the case, but we have been putting it off.  However, with her move to her big girl bed imminent we thought it would be better to get her used to sleeping without pacifiers in her crib where she feels secure and then moving her to the big girl bed.

On Saturday we took her to Build-A-Bear where she could pick out a stuffed animal and put her pacifier in with the stuffing.  She was really excited to get a new stuffed animal (Puppy) but by the time we got home she just cried.  Madelyn finally cried herself to sleep around 11pm and she slept until 7:30 am, so the night wasn't a complete disaster.

On Sunday Madelyn refused to nap, and she told us at bedtime that she did not want Puppy in her crib (he has evidently been banished).  However, she went to bed without any fuss and went to sleep fairly easily.

Monday and Tuesday were a repeats of Sunday...will this continue?  Only time will tell.  However, bummer for Puppy to have to bear the brunt of her feelings about not having pacifiers anymore.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Vacation!

2 weeks ago I celebrated my 30th birthday.  I was not terribly excited about turning 30 and I told Justin that instead of a party or anything along those lines I would prefer to go on a trip and spend some time together without Madelyn.  After some consideration and taking into the account that I was already going to be well into my 3rd trimester of pregnancy prior to travel, we decided that we would probably be best off staying in the country.  Justin's grandmother has a beach house in Ocean City, New Jersey so we worked out a plan involving dropping Madelyn off to spend some quality time with her Mommom and Poppop, seeing some friends in Philly, and then heading to the beach where my sister Becci and her husband Micah were going to meet us.

The beach house has some history for Justin and I: the first time that I went there with him was the weekend that he proposed.  Then, when we lived in Philly we spent a lot of weekends and random middle of the week days driving down to spend some time there.  So, almost 9 years after we got engaged (we actually got engaged on Labor Day weekend) we were back there spending time together and enjoying some of the same things that we had done early on in our married life.  We didn't take a lot of pictures before Justin's mom brought Madelyn down at the end of the week, but here are a couple:


To cap off a fabulous vacation which included a lot of really good food (Italian at Franco and Luigi's in South Philly for my birthday, cheesesteaks at Pat's, Manco & Manco Pizza on the boardwalk, seafood at the Lobster House...) Justin's mom brought Madelyn down to the beach for her first real experience at the Ocean.  Justin and I did take her to the beach when she was 4 months old, but that isn't really quite the same.




I think that Madelyn would have done a little better with some more time at the beach, she needs a good amount of time to warm up to new things, but since then she has been asking when she gets to go back to the ocean so I think we have planted the seeds for many excellent trips to come.