"Big girl" bed?

With Little Man on his way, we have the quandary of where he will sleep.

Our hope is that Abby will move on to a "big girl" bed and he can have her crib.

Not exactly sure how that is going to go. She's a great sleeper and seems to sleep like her mother: as though she's in a coma. But it's the going-to-sleep process that has me wondering.

Currently, we have a great bedtime routine. She gets a bath, we read books and she goes into the crib awake. She has no issue falling asleep on her own.

Prior to falling asleep, however, she DJs in her crib.

She has a Twinkle, Twinkle Violet. We turn on the music after we lay her down in the crib. It says, "10 minute of lullabies."

Once we leave the room, it takes maybe one minute before she starts pushing the different buttons. The one on the bottom is nighttime music, but there is also a general music button.

She pushes this button over and over again. It starts out LOUDLY singing, "NAPTIME'S HERE, MY EYES THEY CLOSE ..." We end up hearing, "NAPTIME'S HEEER- NAPTIME'S HERE, MY- NAPTIME'S HEEERE ..."

In addition to that, she makes sure she pushes the buttons on her music box (aka mobile until we took the mobile part off of it). That includes music by Bach, Beethoven and Mozart. Typically, Abby selects Mozart.

So we end up hearing the lyrics of Violet over the infamous Mozart. This is all well and good in her crib. But what are we to expect when she could potentially get out of her bed to unwind? What exactly will our child get into?

I'm very ready for the "big girl" bed, but it terrifies me at the same time.

What does this say about my child?

Since she has been old enough to understand (probably around a year), Abby has not been pleased when it comes to sharing her toys. And when I say "not pleased" I mean a pee-pee dance, stomping, screaming fit.

Now, I understand that Abby doesn't have the capacity to understand sharing at this point (Lord knows Mayim Bialik would have something to say about this post), but her behavior is enough to evoke these looks:

"The Look"

And when I say she evokes these looks, it's the toddlers she's with that give her those looks as if to say, "Dude, what is your problem?"

Last week, I took Abby to a friend's house to play. Obviously, this means that all of the toys in that house did not belong to her. This is where it was particularly troubling. She suddenly became possessive over toys that weren't hers.

She kept trying to give me a stuffed bear that belonged to the other little girl. Whenever the other little girl would reclaim the bear (that belonged to this girl), Abby would pitch a pee-pee dance, stomping, screaming fit.

Now, I am pretty sure she pitched the fit because she considered this bear to be a special gift to her Mama, but it did evoke "the look" from the other little girl (see photo above).

Tonight was even more extreme.

A different little girl came over and was playing with Abby's toys. Abby was not pleased with this. She literally attempted to retrieve every single toy the other little girl was playing with to give to me so I could "protect" them. Every. Single. Toy.

Again, this evoked "the look" from the other little girl (see photo above).

In both cases, the little girls Abby was playing with also opted to placate her.

The looks they had on their faces were along the lines of, "Wow. This girl is really, really upset. It's not worth it to me, here you go. Take the Elmo that you never play with."

Yes, I know Abby doesn't understand sharing yet, but if we continue along this route, we are going to have to seriously intervene.

I suppose we could take the Mayim Bialik approach, but I don't know how many friends Abby would be able to make in the midst of that process.

Eating = Licking?

Abby emphatically went to the fridge saying, "THIS! THIS!"

Obviously, "this" left me zero clues as to what she actually wanted. I kept running down the list to see if I could give her what she wanted.

Finally I said, "Would you like an apple?"

Yes, Abby says.

"Apple. Apple."

Okay, great. So I cut up the apple into smaller slices and give her one. I cut the rest up and put on a plate. I'll eat most of them.

I sit down on the couch and see that Abby is now playing with her books and has put the apple slice on the floor.

She then walks over to me and starts grabbing the slices off the plate, one-by-one. She licks each one, then places it carefully back on the plate.

Apparently, actually eating the apple wasn't in her plans.

Foresight

Well, we have foresight into our future thanks to a couple incidents this weekend.

First, I was concerned that Abby would be uneasy being dropped off at the church "daycare" while I went to service. She has been reluctant to leave us lately or tends to cry when we leave. Instead of my concerns coming to fruition, she saw the toys and kids in the daycare and never looked back. So much for our clingy child.

Second, I was less concerned that Abby would be overly jealous of her new sibling that will arrive sometime in June. Yesterday we were visiting a friend's three-week old and I was holding her. The dog then barked, startling Abby. She wanted to sit on my lap for comfort ... but I was holding the baby.

She tried to yank the baby off my lap by the foot.

I can see I'll need to be a tad more concerned about Abby come June.

"Mom, give me a drink."

We were eating in the hospital cafeteria. Abby was eating grilled cheese, cucumber pieces, fries and yogurt (not a shocking combo).

I also had a Styrofoam cup of water for her and was letting her sip from a straw.

I asked her if she was ready for water, but then realized she had just put a piece of grilled cheese in her mouth.

She leaned in to take a sip of water, but I said, "Nope, have to wait for you to finish chewing your food first."

So she spit the piece of food into her hand, set it back on the table and leaned in for a drink.

Well, okay then.

And, yes, she resumed eating the same piece once her sip was completed.

Abby's (defiant) language skills

Language is a way to gauge progression amongst kids, but I think it should also be noted when a child is smug in the face of language prompting.

Case in point:

• When I ask Abby to say, "Mama," she gets a wide smile on her face and pauses before she starts with, "dada ... dada ... DADADA."
   
• Abby's first word was "Bert." The child will not say "Ernie." She knows which one is Ernie. In fact, Ernie is her preference. She will say "Bert" until the cows come home. Instead of "Ernie" she laughs like Ernie. "Hee ... hee ... hee ... hee ..."
   
• I have repeated certain words for Abby over and over again hoping she'd pick them up. She hasn't. I think I've said, "uh oh" approximately 1,000,000 times since her birth. Has the child EVER said "uh oh"? Of course not. She hasn't even said anything that resembles "uh oh."
  
  But somehow, she has managed to figure out on her own how to say "cat." I say it's on her own because I have been trying to get her to say "kitty." That's all I use. But she says "cat."

Tom = unable to decipher shirts from pants

Me: "I'm going to rip you."

Tom (dryly): "You're going to rip me."

Me: "Yeah. On the blog. You told me to."

Tom: "About what."

Me: "The fact that you can't put Abby's clothes in the proper drawers."

Tom: "Whatever. The one drawer is pants, shorts and shirts ..."

Me: "No. The drawer is just pants."

Tom: "There were shirts in there!"

Me: "Because you put them in there."

Tom: "No I didn't!"

Me: "Yes ... you did."

Tom: "Whatever."

This is coming from a man who (literally) organizes the shirts in his closet by color and sleeve length. And don't even get me started on his sock drawer.

But he can't figure out that dresses go in the closet, pants in one drawer and shirts in the other.

Maybe he doesn't speak girl. I guess that's not such a bad thing.