So Christmas came and went, and Evie got piles and piles of wonderful presents to play with. But the marquee present, the gift to end all gifts, was the big girl bed. If you asked her what she wanted for Christmas, or what she asked Santa for, there was only one answer (pronounced as one word in Evie-speak: “bigirl bed”).

We were away from the house for Christmas Eve, but Santa left a note saying there was “something big” waiting at the house in Chicago. Sure enough, when we got home, there was the brand new “office bedroom”, resplendent with a new bed, dresser and book shelves. “Everything turned brown!” she exclaimed, since her old furniture was white. It was everything Evie had hoped for and more. We took a video of it, but if you don’t spend a lot of time around her, you would probably think she wasn’t very excited about it. She’s a pretty low-key girl, so you have to know her to really see the things she’s doing that show she is excited. So you’ll have to take my word on it when I tell you that it was that quintessential childhood moment when you get everything you’ve always wanted.

Now, for our part, there were two big concerns going into this: 1) would we lose our hard won gains with sleeping, and 2) would it be okay with her on a different floor of the house.

It turns out, there was no need to worry at all!

From the very first night, she slept perfectly and peacefully, waiting to get out of bed in the morning until we come down and get her out. She doesn’t set a toe outside of her bed until morning. In retrospect, this kind of makes some sense, since she already had the ability to climb out of her crib, but she doesn’t. Also, she doesn’t like to go downstairs by herself due to “scary monsters”, but she has no qualms whatsoever once she is actually in her room. What a relief (especially after hearing some other parents’ horror stories)!

Because we were worried about her downstairs by herself, and in particular worried that we wouldn’t hear her, we finally broke down and bought a baby monitor. It’s kind of funny to buy one at this point, since she’s quite old. We didn’t tell her about it, and she hasn’t noticed it, so we’d like to keep it that way to avoid the dreaded “toddler-monitor-summons”.

Now, I thought I mentioned this on the blog, but I couldn’t find it. When we went to Seattle, we were sleeping in the same room as her. Since we couldn’t really go anywhere while she was sleeping, and we couldn’t have any lights on in the room or anything, we mostly just ended up going to bed when she did. This is where we learned that for the first 20 minutes or so, when we always thought she went right to sleep, she really whispers to her stuffed-animal friends. I don’t know what she tells them, but she’s sure telling them something. The monitor confirms that she seems to do this pretty much every night. I still can’t hear more than the occasional word, but it sounds very interesting!

One last thing, on a lighter note. Evie got some lotion for Christmas, (“Just like mommy and daddy!”) but she wasn’t sure what to make of it at first. Sara asked her what she thought it was.

Evie took a long look at the package and exclaimed, “It keeps away bees!” If that’s what she thought it was, she sure was excited about receiving bee repellent.