We've made the jump. Yesterday at 11:45 AM, a Mattress Discounters truck pulled up in front of the house. Jean was out running, but Colette and I were sitting at the computer playing her Teletubbies game. When we saw the truck, I told Colette, "Your bed's here!"

We went outside, where one of the two delivery men was coming towards the front door with a long box in hand. We said hello and I showed him back to Colette's room. We weren't expecting them until the afternoon, and I had to move some of Colette's toys to make room in the center of the floor for him to set things up. We just made it back down the hallway when the second man arrived at the front door with her bed springs.

Colette followed the man back down the hallway and watched as they pulled the springs out of the plastic and put it down on the frame. Colette stayed behind, looking at what was happening in her room. When we returned to her room with the mattress, Colette was crawling on the springs, shouting "My bed!" It took a little coaxing to get her off the springs long enough to put the mattress down.

She's not tall enough yet to climb into the bed on her own, but I lifted her onto the mattress briefly. All of us then headed down the hall so I could sign for the bed. In less than five minutes they'd come and finished. Colette and I went back down to look at the bed, but it was just then that she remembered the Teletubbies game on the computer.

When Jean got back, I decided to play it innocently, so Colette and I played the game for five minutes before Jean wandered down the hall to her room. She appeared at the doorway, smiling, "Anything you forgot to tell me?"

After lunch, Jean took the crib down, and Colette had her first nap in her bed. We put pillows down by the side of the bed, and told her to sleep close to the wall. I expected her to play in the bed and not sleep, but she was snoozing five minutes after we'd left the room.

Some things haven't changed yet. She still seems to think that a parent must be present if she's going to get up. At the end of her nap she called out, "Mama...Daaaaaddy..." Colette has never tried to get out of her crib on her own (our doctor told us to keep her in the crib until the first time she tried to escape), and some habits don't get questioned.

Last night, a couple of hours after she went to bed, Jean and I were watching Die Hard when we heard a thud. We moved too quickly to hear whether she started to cry. When we got to her room, she was sitting on the pillows we'd put next to her bed, rubbing her face and crying that cry that little children make when they are startled but not really awake. We quickly comforted her and put her back onto the bed, telling her again to stay close to the wall.

After we went to bed, Colette woke. I slept through it, but Jean helped her to the bathroom (which is what woke her). After potty, Jean went back and slept in Colette's room for a few hours with her, before coming back to our room. This morning I awoke to the sound of Colette playing quietly in her bed. She drifted from play to sleep back to play, and only after more than an hour did the call once again come forth: "Maaaammmaaa....Daaaaaaaddy...."

So patient. So happy.

What fun.

back | finishing the hat | next