Contrast

Here are my girls' legs, side by side, after the same amount of sun exposure. I swear they have the same father...

Leaps and Bounds

With her favorite book, Dora Loves Boots

Amelia, lending moral support

Little girl, big room

Sweet dreams...

Between my girls, Sadie is without question the more easy going of the two; however, when she sets her mind to something, it is nearly impossible to dissuade her from that path. When she was two weeks old, Sadie decided that she would never take a feeding from anything but her mother's breast. And she never did. Not once. I tried every bottle on the market, even the kind that are made to resemble a real breast that you find advertised in the back of parenting magazines. When I went back to work, her babysitters had to feed her with a little medicine dropper because she refused everything else. At two weeks old, she made a decision about the way she wanted to be fed...and there was no going back.

So it was with sleeping in a crib. Saturday night, I put her to bed and within ten minutes heard sobbing in her room: deep, racking sobs as if she were scared. She never does this, so I went to check on her and as I walked in, she screamed between sobs, "I want sleep Pooh bed. I want to sleep Pooh bed!" It took several more minutes before it became clear what she was trying to communicate in her broken toddler English. "Pooh bed" is the toddler bed with Winnie-the-Pooh sheets we still had set up from our friends' visit back in April. Fine, I thought. I'll just put the sheets on her crib mattress. As I changed her sheets and began to put the mattress back in the crib, Sadie began waving her hands wildly and sobbing again, "I want sleep Pooh bed! I want to sleep Pooh bed!" So once more, I took the mattress out of the crib and this time put it on the floor. As soon as it touched the carpet, Sadie dove for the mattress and requested her favorite doll and blanket to snuggle with. I stayed with her for a minute, kissed her and closed the door. We heard not a sound from her room for the rest of the night. That's all it took for her to make that leap from a baby to a toddler.

Last night, we set up the toddler bed and removed her crib for good. Here are the obligatory "first night in a big girl bed" pictures. Sweet dreams, little gir! You are growing up too fast...