Climbing leads to (no) babies.

I'm not quite sure how this happened.  Everyone told us having a girl was different.  In several ways, it is.  However, in the ways we were banking on (meeker, less adventurous, less risk-taking) it has not been true for our family.  With Evangeline's election to not walk until, well--now, most people assume she is careful and not a risk-taker.  Unfortunately, it only applies to her desire to walk.  It doesn't translate to any other avenue of her life.  Hence, the climbing on everything, her attempts at somersaults, her desire to jump into the pool repeatedly, her willingness to kick her feet to swim and be dunked momentarily.  In all honesty it makes me look at her and laugh at the goodness of God and how He fashioned her for our family.  Without a doubt, this baby girl is more like us than if we had birthed her.  Anyway, yesterday all of this adventure commenced into one event that left me feeling...stuped.  Actually, as I sit here to type I cannot put my finger on a single word to describe how I felt--a little shocked, slightly sorry for myself, and primarily hilariously mystified at my fate.

Evangeline has superseded her brother in a way I wish she had elected to let him to lead.  She has managed to figure out how to throw her foot over her crib and start to crawl out, despite it being on the lowest setting.  It took Josiah until 20 months old to figure this one out, and he was quite the monkey.  She is 16 months.  Until now, I had dreams of raising a child that kindly slept in her crib until nearly 3 years old, only moved from her crib because we requested.  This did actually happen for several of my friends.  When I watched Evangeline throw her foot over the top of the crib with great ease and then begin to shift her body weight to follow, all of the emotions I felt when Josiah did the same thing far too early in life came flooding back.  I even wrote about it here almost exactly 3 years ago.  The emotions that felt the most familiar were dread, confidence he was not ready for the transition, and amazement that we were moving out of the need for a crib.  This time I felt even more strongly it was absolutely not time for a toddler bed yet.  However, my options were limited.  

Jonathan helped me haul the toddler bed out of the basement and we did our bedtime routine as usual.  I snapped a photo to remember the moment.  We put her in her bed, closed the door, and waited.  I listened to the screaming coming closer and closer to the door.  Then I listened as it regressed and became muffled, a sure sign she was burying her face in her blanket as she settled down.  Silence.  She had indeed returned to her own bed, climbed back in, and fallen asleep.  

This seemed like a giant feat to me, as she is surrounded by invitations to toys, or worse, her brother's lofted slide bed.  I'm not 100% excited yet about this transition.  I'm not confident she will always return to her bed.  I  can no longer ignore her morning chatter in hopes for just 5 more minutes in bed.  She cheerfully scooted into my room far too early this morning.  I left the crib fully assembled, like it will offer me some kind of consolation if I can't figure out what it means to have a child that barely walks but requires a toddler bed.  However, here is where our journey begins into having two amazing, growing, adventurous children.  I suppose since she thinks she can out-pace her brother we will just follow up with potty training next month.  Now that would not be a bad thing.

first night smile

I'm such a big sleeping girl!