"Table for 1, by the window please"

So far in 2011 we've made some pretty big changes, for us at least. We ushered in one of the most boring New Year's by spending our New Year's Eve at Ikea buying Annie a table & chairs, and new big girl bed. Then proceeded to spend our evening putting them together. Woo-ho! Crazy, I know!

The upside is that Annie sure does love her new stuff. We figured since Nichol has been a lot better about sleeping through the night, the time might finally be upon us that we can have the kids share a room. But before we can do that, we have to get Annie out of her crib. This is something that we have been hesitant to do since about the time she was born... I just felt the minute that she wasn't contained in her crib, she would be all over and never get any sleep. So we decided to just bite the bullet and make the change on a Friday night, so we had all weekend to deal with the aftermath and both of us would be home to focus on this effort. And I'm proud to report, it wasn't that bad.

We thought the biggest issue was going to be her getting out of her bed and playing in her room when she was supposed to be sleeping. This turned out to be less of an issue at night. Maybe because it was so dark that playing in the dark didn't hold much appeal, or maybe the stern talking to before bed actually worked. Either way, the toughest transition ended up being that she missed her crib and was trying to climb back into it to sleep. Aww... But the first night was the toughest, and even that was pretty easy. Naptime you have to give her a warning and check in on her pretty frequently, but even that hasn't been half as bad as we thought.

We've been wanting to get Annie a table and chairs for a while, so we figured we should just buy that too. She loves sitting at her table during meals, although most of the sitting is in short bursts. Her new eating regime consists of sitting to take a bite, then running around while she's chewing her food. Or if you have left the room, then she will be right behind you wondering where you are or what you are doing. Annie always likes to know where everyone is and what everyone is doing.