Big Girl Bedroom

Parents learn quickly that our own excitement and enthusiasm are two of the most effective tools to deploy when we are trying to sell things to our children and/or get them to do what we want them to do. If I’m excited about it, Harper can much more easily get on board for whatever it is. I can be quite convincing. Recent examples include:

Big girl panties!

Naptime!

Your babysitter is here!

Broccoli!

Most recently, I did the whole excitement and enthusiasm song and dance (literally) to prep Harper to make the move from the crib in her nursery to her New! Big Girl! Bedroom! I hyped up her new big girl room and I wanted to make her first night in there a grand event.  My plan was for a recent Saturday night to be night one in her new room. You see, I didn’t want to start mid-week in case there were issues that disturbed our precious sleep and I didn’t want to start Friday night because we had a babysitter coming.

Around 11:30pm that Friday night we were wrapping up a super fun dinner with friends and I happened to look at my phone. I had a missed call, voicemail and text message, each left four hours earlier, from our sweet babysitter asking me which bedroom Harper slept in. Apparently Harper had duped the sitter into believing that she had already made the move out of the crib and into her new room. Lies! I came home to find her sound asleep in her brand new big bed like she’d been doing it all along.

I hardly slept a wink that first night because I was worried that she would wake up at 4am wondering where she was, fall out of bed, splash in the toilet, take a swig of Clorox, open the door to the porch, and jump off the balcony. In that order. Fortunately, my worrying and worst-case-scenarioizing was for naught. Harper slept like a rock and woke up the next morning at her usual time, truly delighted by her independence and maturity. Needless to say, I did what any modern mother would do when things seem to be going too well, and put some eyes on the situation. I deployed the Super Secret Spy Cam to see what really goes on in there.

It’s been a few weeks now, and so far the transition has been pretty dang seamless…though not entirely uneventful.

It took her one week to figure out that she could get out of bed by herself (darn) and it took another week for her to realize that once she got out of bed, she could open her door and walk down the hall (daaaamn). That move demanded a serious conversation threatening major loss of privileges if she left her room again. She hasn’t pulled that stunt since. Overall, so far, so good. Now she just screams, “Mommy and Daaahhdy, it’s time to wake up now” until one of us comes and gets her in the morning. I’ll take it.

**Edited to add: Shortly after pressing publish, we implemented the Green Light System (patent pending).  It is a game changer!  We got this light, and I here is a post with pro tips for making it work at your house.

Here are a few pictures of her New! Big Girl! Bedroom!