So, anyway, we made a trip up to Schaumburg to IKEA to shop for beds. We knew we wanted to use the crib for baby and after looking online, we found some reasonable ones at IKEA. We ended up with this one.
It was really basic and REALLY cheap! I think the frame was like $50 and then we got the mattress, as well as her bedding there, too. Here she is just doing a little bedtime reading.
We were pleasantly surprised with how well the transition was. We told her that the #1 rule was that she "could not get out of the bed." We said when she woke up in the morning, to just say "Mommy, Daddy, I'm awake." She only got up ONCE on the first night and I am pretty sure it was to go out in the hall where I had thrown a bunch of stuff that needed to be put in a new place after adding the big girl bed to the room (the crib is also in there since we only have 2 bedrooms upstairs. The others are in the basement or on the main floor (ones we COULD use as a bedroom) and not ones we'd use for a 2 year old. Anyway, we heard the door creak so I went upstairs and she was in the hallway grabbing some stuffed animal. I asked her what she was doing and I think I caught her off guard so of course she cried, and cried, but then we just told her again she can't get out of the bed and honestly she hasn't since!
We've had a few phases where she will cry when we walk out of the room and there were a few nights I sat there rubbing her back until she fell asleep because I just didn't want to listen to her crying (yep...she figured me out! haha). But like I said, it really was just a phase and obviously I wasn't going to sit there every night doing that so we've had some cry it out moments. Sometimes if she starts crying when we walk out of the room, we will immediately go back in and sort of say "no, you aren't going to cry!" with a stern voice and it actually seems to work!!!
