Big Girl Abby

We had a pretty rough September (after the beach)...We discovered that Abby was using her pappy as a teether. She was able to chew almost completely through the rubber in about 2 days!!

Obviously the pappy had to go....

And as you can see, this pappy obsession started a loooong time ago...

tiny Abby with her "pappy"

We gathered up the pappies and told Abby they were broken. And she put them in the trash can. Even Gavin's pappy - her favorite. Anything that she loves becomes Gavin's (fill in the blank)...LOL

She wasn't worried about tossing them at all. We praised her for being such a big girl and for throwing her pappies away. And she could have cared less...

And then night fell...and everything fell apart!

It was awful. She cried for her pappies. She had pitiful conversations with herself about the pappies being "mal" (broken) and that she had thrown them in the trash can. It really seemed like she was giving herself a pep-talk. I had to start laying on the floor in her room. No one in our house slept.

Then to make matters worse, she started hurting herself in her bed. With no pappy to calm her down, she started sticking her legs out of the crib and getting them stuck. She had bruises all over her legs! So now all of a sudden, Greg and I were thinking that we should move her to a toddler bed...

I mean why not ruin everything all at once, right?!? (Do you remember the Miracle Blanket withdrawals? Sound familiar??)

Out came the books that we had long packed away. Tears and more tears followed. And now it had been 2 weeks since anyone in our house had had a good night sleep (or a nap!). We were miserable!

But we pressed on and converted the baby bed to a toddler bed....

Ready for big girl Abby!

Abby was not impressed...

The first night she fell asleep ok with me on the floor - we considered that a success. The next night we spent 2 hours chasing her around the house and putting her back in the bed. We did not consider that a success....ugh.

We even moved her back in the pack-n-play in our room for a couple of days...but she still cried and started throwing the mattress out of the bed!

And then I had enough. It had been 2 weeks. And I hit my brick wall. Greg and I decided that the books were right and we needed to let Abby suck it up. So we put a pallet on the floor next to her door, put up the baby gate at her door and let her deal with it. She sat by her door and cried. I sat on my bed and cried. And Greg sat next to me timing her. Every 5 minutes we would re-evaluate if we needed to go to her. And every 5 minutes we decided to give her another 5 minutes.

And after 24 minutes she was asleep. On her own. Of course she was on the floor but she was at least sleeping!!!

The next night it was about 19 minutes of tears. Again she was on the floor (each night I moved her to her bed).

And on the 3rd night she cried by the gate for less than 10 minutes, then got back in her bed and went to sleep!!!

SUCCESS!!!!

We were so excited!

And then we moved....

Back to square one....