Big Girls

Our girls are growing up!

Last month, Amelia graduated from her toddler bed to a twin bed, a move that involved quite the reshuffling of the girls' sleeping arrangements.

You see, Amelia's new bed is really Louisa's mini crib with longer rails.  But because the twin wouldn't fit where Amelia's toddler bed was located (chimney), Amelia and Ramona had to switch sides of the room.  Instead of moving (and reshimming) EVERY bed, we (and by "we" I mean Chad) just took the toddler rail off of Ramona's bed and moved it to Amelia's old bed: voila, new bed for Ramona.  Then, we moved Ramona's old bed into Louisa's room -- which included a dismantling and a rebuilding to get it through the doorways -- and put the crib front back on: new full-size crib for Louisa (which is a much better fit, pun intended, for our growing-like-a-weed baby girl).  Finally, we added the longer rails to the mini crib and hauled up Amelia's new boxspring and mattress: new big girl bed for Amelia!

Loving her big bed

I was worried that our current home wouldn't accommodate this switch, and so I was pleasantly surprised by how nicely everything still fits.  We did have to get rid of the bookcase that was in the office/nursery -- about half of the books have been boxed up and relocated to the basement, and the other half donated to the library -- but that was the only furniture casualty.  Maximizing our limited square footage, for the win!

Ramona hit two big milestones in January: preschool and potty training!  She was definitely ready for both. 

While she's still a little young for preschool at not quite two-and-a-half (and the necessary age for most programs is 2 years, 9 months, but the girls' school has some flexibility on that), Ramona was SO excited about the prospect of going to school when we started discussing it late last fall, and did so well on her "visit" days, that we decided to enroll her for the spring semester.  And she just LOVES it.  She talks about her "friends" from school and sings songs that she's learning nonstop. 

First day of preschool

Ramona wasn't quite as excited about potty-training, although our positive reinforcement system (M&Ms) and the prospect of wearing big-girl undies helped.  We used the same method that we used for Amelia, exactly two years earlier -- three days at home with no bottoms and frequent visits to the potty -- and it worked just as well for Ramona as it did for Amelia!  She's had a couple of accidents, but only at home so far, and not in the car or at school, which is great.  In any case, Chad and I are ecstatic about having only one kid in diapers again.  Woohoo!

A third, more minor milestone for Ramona this past month was (finally) mastering a regular cup.  She had been working on this for a while, but was pretty attached to her sippy cup and we didn't want to push it, mostly for selfish reasons -- so many fewer spills with a sippy cup!  Ramona's got the hang of a regular cup now, though, and can chug her milk even more quickly than should could before.  The girl likes her beverages!

Meanwhile, Louisa officially has begun crawling (as opposed to the sliding and scooting she had been doing), which means that it's time to get out the baby gates again (boo). 

On the move

She is also growing like crazy (weighing in at about 20 pounds now), which is probably due to the ever-expanding list of solid foods that she eats.  In fact, we haven't yet found anything she won't eat!

Peas and avocado for dinner

Eight months old last week, she is becoming increasingly skilled at entertaining herself and is so much fun.

Smiling with the monkey during her eight-month photo shoot...

But crawling out of the basket!  Harder to photograph now that she's mobile.

While chalking up their new accomplishments, I can't help but feel a little sad.  Don't get me wrong, I really love watching the girls master new skills and become more independent... I just wish they would slow it down a little!

Waving hello and good-bye these days