Big Girl Bed

After repeated incidents of Emily climbing out of her crib, we couldn't put off the switch to a big girl bed any longer. I was dreading some long nights of walking her back to bed over and over, and some nap-time fights, so I was pleasantly amazed that the transition has been almost seamless.

She fell out of bed the first few nights, so we put the bumper back in for a little extra stability. She only climbs out if she is upset about something (like last night when the heater in her room stopped working... great timing, since it was about 20 below outside. thank goodness for extension cords!) or when I occasionally try to put her down for a nap before she's tired enough.

Today, she slept in the car on the way home from a huge grocery shopping trip, but I had a lot to do, so I tried to get her to go right back down. Half an hour or so later I heard noises in her room - I found her holding her Eagles tshirt, wearing a pair of jeans on her head, and grabbing the broken top drawer of her dresser. Sigh. It looks like we have a super glue project to go along with the electricity issue. Next, she spilled my coffee all over the kitchen floor. Apparently she can reach things on the counter now. It's definitely a Baby Einstein afternoon!

Holidays

Alasdair took Christmas Eve day off & we spent it tromping around in the snow behind our house. For the Christmas Eve service, our church rents a little wooden chapel. It's heated by a wood stove & the only instrument was a harp; very beautiful and cozy. We drove straight from there to my parents house in MA, where we spent Christmas Day with my whole family. The highlight as always was watching Emily play with her cousins. The girls are old enough now that they really remember each other, and Emily loves baby Daniel.

(Visiting Great Granny Ware Christmas afternoon)

The day after Christmas, we drove to Philadelphia...almost. We 'd heard there would be snow, but weren't too concerned about it. Oops. We spent the night in a hotel in NJ and made it to Philly on Monday for Christmas take two with Alasdair's family. We spend the week hanging out with family & visiting some good friends.

(Emily kept asking me to clean the frosting off her hands, until I told her to lick it. Her lights lit up, and with a "yummm" she immediately started scraping off the roofing.)

This was the first year that we didn't have a New Years reunion with our college friends... but lucky for us a few other Dartmouth couples live in Philadelphia now, so we spent the evening at the Leanders' with the Chens.

Ps. I used to think it was so weird when parents talked about this in public... but Emily did her first poop on the potty this week. It was a fluke, since we aren't potty training yet, but Emily is very interested... so maybe soon. She also came out with the phrase "I did a poo" which she repeated over & over since it got such a great response. Also somewhat of a fluke, since she definitely doesn't understand pronouns yet. :)