This morning, I was awoken by the neighbor’s dog barking at 7:30am.  I glanced at the monitor, saw that Elizabeth was still asleep, and stayed in bed for a little while. A few minutes later, I heard a baby crying.  I looked at the monitor again, saw Elizabeth still sleeping, and wondered who had a crying baby outside in our neighborhood.  (Because, otherwise, how would I hear them from my bedroom?)

Moments later, I heard a very insistent “MAMA!”  I looked at the monitor again.  I saw this:
It’s hard to tell in the picture, but if you look in the lower right hand corner, that is a sleeping Elizabeth.

I got out of bed and went into the hallway.  Elizabeth was definitely crying in her room.  I opened her door and found her perched on the very end of her bed.  (I am very thankful that she doesn’t seem to understand that she can actually get out of bed by herself now that she is no longer contained by bars.)

The baby monitor was frozen on that image.  Elizabeth went with me into my room and saw herself on the monitor.  “Dat’s me!  Seeping!”  She helped me take that picture.

Hopefully it will work tonight.  We don’t have another monitor and you never know when her room might get imaginary bats in it.

Do you know what this is?

It’s a room without a crib. I know I said Matt and I were in no hurry to move her out of her crib, but apparently she was. After four nights of her crying all night because she was scared, tonight it finally occurred to me to ask her if it would make her happy if we took the crib out of her room. Since she’s been claiming the crib had bats in it and sleeping on her other bed anyway, I figured it made no difference.

She still protested going to bed tonight because she was scared of bats, but we will see if this makes any difference.

And with absolutely no prompting on my part, she informed me that we need to go to IKEA and buy a new bed. “Yes, Mama, IKEA has beds!” I think she has one of those toddler beds in mind and she’ll be disappointed when I get her a boring twin frame.