I have been remiss in not posting about Briar’s big girl bed.
I gushed so over the chair that I was too exhausted to write
about her first night in her very own big girl bed. Anyone
who knows Briar, or has heard me talk about her will probably
not be surprised to hear that she did an amazing job. She is
just so game. She’ll really try just about anything, except
of course, Garden of Eatin’ Red Hot Blues chips, which is fine
with me, cause this mama loves ’em.

How was that for a run on sentence that made me sound like I
push junk food on my kid?

I have every intention of posting pictures of the bed and Briar,
but tonight I’m on the laptop(and in bed- so decadent!) and don’t
have the pictures handy. It is not the white cottage style bed
we had picked out online, but at the store we had Briar check
it out and she was thoroughly delighted by it.

She and I went to Target and were shameless.
I pushed the cart up and down the aisles, oohing
and awing over the luscious spring colors everywhere.
Briar would find something that tickled
her fancy and I would snatch it off the shelf and hand
it to her. Keep in mind that the furniture
adventure had involved a 40 minute drive to Albany,
well over an hour power shop through the store,
the 40 minute trip home and then a raucous visit with
Nana and her sister. By the time we hit Target it
was close to five, there’d been no real afternoon nap
to speak of, meals had been kind of spotty (though
that can be chalked up to diminished appetite thanks
to teething and a stuffy nose) I was really trying
to prevent a 19 month old meltdown (and let’s be honest,
an 8 month pregnant meltdown). Briar eventually tired of
the different things I handed her and they would get
returned to the shelves. However we did accomplish our
objective of getting things for her bed and her room.

We picked out three fitted sheets – a butterfly version,
a flannel cotton candy colored bubble version and
a good old Pooh number. I had planned on getting Blues Clues,
Dora, etc sets, but couldn’t find them for crib size mattresses.
I decided to go all out for the blanket and let Briar absolutely
make the call. We came home with a vibrant blue, pink and yellow
fleece blanket with Belle, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.
So much for the mom who wasn’t going to let her daughter go
nauseatingly pink and lavender. My sweet, adventurous, brilliant,
audacious little girl loves to luxuriate in pink and frills as
much as she loves collecting twigs and playing with the dog’s
water dish.

We also picked up a flower shaped rug to go alongside her bed
in a mix of…you guessed it- hot pink and purple.
Add a fuschia pillow, pink curtains and a animal drawer
pulls and there you have the wonderland that we created
in honor of her graduation to the big girl bed.

I’ll tell the story of her first few nights another time.
For now I’ll just say that Sean “The Mariano Rivera of bedtime”
(despite us being Sox fans) continues to have incredible
instincts when it comes to Briar and bedtime. He insisted on
disassembling the crib before we even tried getting her to
sleep in the bed.

“Nope. She’s a big girl now. She has a big girl bed.
No more crib.”

Never mind that he’ll have to put it back together again,
never mind that the articles say to transition slowly.

He knew.

(He also would have loved to have her in bed with us “Just
until she got used to it.” so that he could nuzzle and cuddle
with her, laying side by side in the morning with their
identical profiles.)

And he was right.

Our baby is such a big girl. But she will always be my baby.
My first. My Briar.

God, I’m lucky.

G’night.