Going All Mommy Blog For a Minute....

I figured I'd give you all some fair warning that today's post, along with yesterday's are going to throw me fully into the realm of the mommy blogger. If that bores you, then consider yourself warned and move along. I'll be back to my regularly scheduled blogging next week.

With AJ's second birthday rapidly approaching (more on that later) I've been thinking about several things that come along with growing up, namely potty training and moving her into a big-girl bed.

I'm thinking that we won't potty train until this summer when she can be pants-less/naked for most of the day without getting chilly. She isn't really ready yet, although she has started to sit (fully clothed) on her potty when I go to the bathroom. She doesn't yet tell me when she "goes" in her diaper and she doesn't seem bothered at all to be sitting in a wet diaper. Since we use cloth diapers, they are actually wet, as opposed to disposables, which wick the moisture away from the skin.

I know that typically when a kid is potty-trained they need to be able to get out of bed in the middle of the night and go potty if they have to.

With that being said, I don't need to switch her to a big-girl bed until we potty train, but I think I'd like to get her accustomed to sleeping in a real bed for a few weeks (at least) before we start with the hard-core potty training. I anticipate the switch being difficult (mostly for me) because I have a feeling that she is going to get in and out of bed a lot before falling asleep at night. I also am not sure if I should be closing her bedroom door when we switch her to the big bed or if I should leave it open?

Any experienced mamas have advice for me? Right now we close her door completely and keep our door closed as well. She has a lot of cabinets and drawers in her room that she likes to play with and I'm nervous that she will destroy her room if I shut her in there and just hope she goes to sleep.

On the other hand, we have a great bed-time routine down. We give her a bath, get her in jammies and then read a book and put her to bed. I leave the room while she is still awake and she is usually quiet until she falls asleep, but occasionally she cries or whines for a few minutes before going to sleep. When I switch her, do I just continue with the same routine and put her in the bed and leave or should I stay with her? She is so used to us not being with her when she sleeps that I don't think she'll fall asleep if I stay in the room with her, she thinks its a game.

Finally, we have a twin bed that we're planning to use for her room eventually, but should I consider buying a toddler bed to make the transition, or will I just be setting myself up for another whole struggle to transition from the toddler bed to the twin bed? What worked for your kiddos?

HELP!

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In...

Here we go again!

Link up at Wife of a Sailor.

1. Are you a night owl or an early bird?
I'm totally a night owl, I have trouble falling asleep most nights, so I stay up! The funny thing is though, as soon as I get up in the morning, I'm up. As soon as I am actually "awake" I start talking and it annoys D so much!

2. What makes you jealous?
Hmmm, the only time I've really been jealous during our relationship was when D was deployed and his ex-girlfriend emailed him a few times. I found out because he had me check his AKO periodically and I saw some back and forth between them. I was jealous because we were in a situation where he barely had time to talk to me and he was using part of his time to talk to her. As soon as I told him how I felt he stopped talking to her.

3. Have you started Christmas/holiday shopping yet? When will you finish? (There's only 63 days left!)
Usually I would have already started, but since we have no stores here the movers are packing and shipping our stuff at the beginning of December I'm planning to wait until we get back to Hometown, USA before I start. I'm typically on top of this sort of thing, though.

4. What would you have a personal chef make you tonight?
Crab cakes, lobster bisque, Filet Minon, horseradish mashed potatoes, asparagus, shrimp arrabiata, chocolate cake and a white chocolate macadamia nut pizookie (warm) with vanilla ice cream on top.

5. Where was your first kiss?
It was in Virginia Hansen's backyard in Hometown, USA when I was 14.

I'm not gonna lie, things have been pretty uneventful around here lately, hence my lack of posting. I just haven't really felt like I have anything interesting to say. I was going to post a video of AJ yesterday for Wordless Wednesday, but I wanted to edit it first and by the time I got it pulled up in the video editor, she was up from her 20 minute nap.

Seriously, this girl has been refusing to nap. I don't know what the problem is. When I put her down for a nap she will sleep for about 20-30 minutes and then wake up and scream! There were a few days where her nighttime sleep was shoddy as well, but we're doing better now. She slept from 7-7 last night and didn't wake up once! I just don't know what we're going to do about the naps, I can't get anything done during the day because she won't sleep and every time I walk out of the room she cries. Hopefully we can figure something out soon, our house is starting to look pretty scary!

Since the video still isn't edited, I will leave you with the unedited version. Please excuse the fact that the beginning part is just me video-taping the floor.

My...What a BIG Girl I Have!

I don't know what all your thoughts are on co-sleeping and honestly, I don't want to start a debate, but I'm going to put this out there. We co-slept with AJ for quite a while. It was never my intention and really was more out of necessity than anything. Seriously, the girl screamed if she was placed on her back, whether she was swaddled or not. The only way we could get her to sleep was to let her sleep on me, and eventually, next to me.

Notice that in the above paragraph, I said "we co-slept." As of Sunday July 11, 2010, Miss AJ has not slept in our bed one time. She has been exclusively sleeping in her crib, in her bedroom for all naps and at night!

This transition has not been an easy one, but at 18 weeks old (or 4 months) I knew that it certainly wasn't going to get any easier for either of us, the longer we waited. So we jumped into it. My main reason for moving her to her own bed was because she was starting to roll and I didn't want to worry about her rolling off our bed during her naps (obviously at night she's in between us so it isn't a problem). I figured that if she was going to be napping in her crib then she should just sleep there too.

We are still having trouble getting her to settle into sleep, but as soon as she is soundly sleeping she's golden. I think that is more due to her nature than the location, so its something we'll have to keep working on and try to figure out a good routine.

That is all! Just a boring Saturday here for us, although the in-laws are in town (arrived late last night). Pretty much any Saturday here in the middle of nowhere is boring, FYI.