Big girl!!!

Our little girl became a big girl tonight. We put her into her crib, and she proceeded to swing her leg over the side to climb out. We had been dreading this harbinger of the end of the crib. We knew it was coming, as the crib rail is rapidly approaching her belly button, and had talked about trying to make the transition in December when I'll be home most mornings. Well, tonight's leg swing put the gas pedal on the whole process. We put her back in the crib,turned off the light, and watched as she lifted the other leg over the side!

The light went back on as we rearranged her room and she wandered the house. The crib was too wide to roll out of her room, so we shoved it against the closet door. The mattress went onto the floor in the corner where the crib had been, in a vain attempt to pretend that everything is really still the same as it was the day we brought her home from the hospital. Grace immediately saw through our ruse, and spent the next 45 minutes wandering around the room, knocking things over, making vaguely complaining noises. She also employed her recently acquired skill of turning the doorknob to open the door. (It makes sense that she would figure out both how to escape the crib and how to escape her room in one week. No flies on her.) Fortunately for us all, Daddy had the foresight to place one of those baby security thingies on her doorknob, so she couldn't turn it. This did not forestall her continued attempts to do so.

The whole time, hubby and I are sitting in the living room, feeling extreme anxiety about how disastrous the night will be, fielding calls from his mom, planning to get the playyard out if she's still roving at 11 PM. Should we check on her? Should we just sit here gnawing our knuckles?

At 10:15 or so, we noticed that she was no longer making any noise, and we looked at each other in amazement. Was it possible that she actually went to sleep within a reasonable period of time? This from our daughter?? We were then gripped with fear--what if she had fallen asleep in front of the door? We let the silence continue for another 15 minutes, then snuck to the door, gently turning the knob and peering into the night-lit gloom. There she lay, on her bed.

We were stunned and delighted, and returned to the living room to dance and laugh and hug, celebrating our daughter's leap out of babyhood.