Saying Goodbye to the Co-Sleeper

As you know, Avery became very mobile a couple of weeks ago. And with that, we knew right away that her days of sleeping in Mommy and Daddy's room were very limited. Which brings me to last week... at some point, Avery began waking up at night (not new) and crawling towards me (new). I ended up grabbing her and pulling her out of the sleeper each time before she actually got to the edge (it was my attempt at thwarting her from learning how to get out on her own, hoping that I could keep her near me at night as long as possible).

That method seemed to be working for the time being, until... one night after we'd put Avery down for the night and were watching TV in the living room, we heard her make a peep. As we are accustomed to doing, we got up right away and went to the room to see if she'd awakened. Instead of seeing her little head popped up from across the room though, we opened the door to find her waiting for us on our bed. And that was when we knew she'd graduated to her crib.

Friday night ended up being Avery's last night in her co-sleeper. The picture above is one we took of her sleeping in it that night.

These two photos are from Saturday morning. It's like she knew that it was her last time in the sleeper, and she was enjoying every second exploring it. She kept crawling towards the end and climbing up to her knees, then getting down and doing it all over again. We got tons of cute pictures of it. And eventually (as evidenced by the shot above), she showed us her newest trick of climbing out of it. We cheered her on as she did, embracing her milestone.

And this is Avery sleeping peacefully (at that moment) in her crib for the first entire evening. She only woke us up 10 times that night.

I'd like to say that the transition is going well. Honestly, it was harder on me than her, until today apparently. I'm having such a horrible time getting her to take naps that I employed the Cry It Out method today. And well... she cried it out for one long hour, at the end of which she had no intention of stopping and a poopy diaper. When she did finally go to sleep, I only accomplished a 30 minute nap. Even an hour of crying doesn't seem to make a difference!

For the rest of the day, she was even more tired than before the nap and clingy. This evening, we put her down early (I'm trying to embrace the Sleep Begets Sleep theory), and every time she's woken up, she's immediately began screaming and refuses to go back to sleep. Which is why I can't give you a general update right now. In the course of me typing this, she's gotten up again and is currently fussing for me in the living room. So you'll have to check back for another post later this week I guess. Hope you all have a great second half of the week, and wish me luck on getting some kind of decent sleep tonight!