Big Girl Bed, Pretend, and Baby T Names....not to be

Last weekend we got a "big girl" bed for Rhianwen. We were SO excited about it b/c it was a trundle bed, only $175 on Craigslist, barely used, solid wood, AND made in the USA! Plus when Wally got there, they took $25 off b/c it had a chip on part of the wood. We took Rhianwen to try out mattresses at the Original Mattress Factory and got 2, one for the trundle and one for the top. We figured, if we don't use the trundle enough, we can always use the extra mattress for the next bed! Then, we went to Target to get FUN monkey sheets. We salvaged an old flat hardish pillow from daddy's childhood (personally, I feel great about this b/c imagining my baby on a nice fluffy feather pillow just makes me worry about suffocation) and a cute comforter from mommy's childhood, got a safety rail, and have yet to get a mattress cover (hopefully tomorrow!). Rhianwen was super excited about the whole thing. We let her play on it for a week so she could get used to it and talked it up big about her sleeping in it soon.

Her new bed including fun monkey sheets (see pillow).

Since daddy had such a busy week, we waited until yesterday to try to get her to sleep in it when she could experience normalcy in the usual bedtime ritual with both mommy AND daddy there. Rhianwen cried like she does when we stay at an unusual place, and daddy had to go back in and redo the "Jesus Loves Me" song and had to pray again, but after that she calmed down, rolled around for a little, and went to sleep. She slept until about 5:30am when she woke up for a minute and called for mommy, but we didn't go in, and she went right back to sleep. When she woke up for real at 7am, the first thing she said was, "Monkeys!"(referring to her fun sheets). And she went on rolling around and talking happily until she decided she wanted "Ceyal" aka cereal. We both went in there and celebrated with her, took some pics, and got breakfast. What a good girl she is!

Happy to see all the fuss we're making about it.

Today, we put her down for a nap, and she took a whole hour to go to sleep, BUT she stayed in her bed the entire time and just had a good ole time by herself!!!! Shocking! Tonight, she pretty much went right down with just a little bit of a fuss at the end. But much better than last night. Soon it'll be time to get the crib out of her room! She really amazes me sometimes.

Pretending has been a new fun thing for Rhianwen recently. She continues to find new things to do with Snowbear, like putting her in the highchair and trying to strap her in.

"How's that?"

I've also let Rhianwen keep her yogurt container and spoon after her afternoon snack so that she can pretend to feed Snowbear, her dolls, rocking horse etc.

Feeding her dollies.

Saturday, we sampled some double joggers in preparation for the upcoming arrival. It'll be a hard decision. The 2 we looked at had different features, and we wish we could find one that had all of them for an affordable price. Well, we will see, but Rhianwen enjoyed getting to try them out.

As far as names go, I have some definite NO ways! I mean, when you get a book from the library called 55,000+ names, you don't really expect to find suggestions like J, J., Demon, and Suck Chin. But, there you go. They were in there; I guess they were just desperate to hit the record number of names so that when you peruse the shelf you think, "Hm, well here is one with 20,000 names, oh, no, wait, here is one with 33,000. AH HA! Here is one with 55,000, might as well go with the book with the most options." Sucker! At least I didn't buy it. That being said, I did find some options, and we have narrowed it down to 2 names, one more traditional and one Celtic. But we are split on which to choose. The middle name will definitely be Wallace b/c I love that it comes from William Wallace (Braveheart) who is in Wally's family line. It's just TOO cool a connection to ignore. But Wally flatly refused to have a IV (he is Hugh Wallace T. the III) b/c he lived with the other 2 in the same house and it got very confusing. Don't know what will convince me one way or the other, but I really want to pin it down so I can think of baby T as that name. It'll give him a whole perceived personality (don't know if that is good or bad, but that is how I am with names). Names just give me a feeling when I hear them. Like Demon...well, that gives me the feeling of calling on the name of Jesus...that's not so bad, but...um, well...you know, Demon kind of gives you a creepy feeling in the back of your spine.