It seems so long ago that we were talking about SIDS and whether it was safe to have Kaija sleep in our bed with us. All of those nights with her cradled in my arms, rocking and singing her to sleep… nights when she when she’d wake up crying and we’d need to figure out how long we should wait before going in to check on her… nights where she wouldn’t go to sleep with us in there… nights were she’d fall asleep but wake up as soon as we touched the door knob…Okay, so we’re still experiencing some of those nights. But tonight was another milestone for us… the first night I put her down in her “big girl bed” rather than her crib.Yesterday we moved the furniture around and assembled the bed while Kaija was spending time at her grandparents’ house. The bed is a four-poster hand-me-down that was my mother’s bed when she was a little girl. We didn’t have time to put a mattress pad, sheets or blankets on it before we had to leave for a play and a family dinner. It didn’t matter. Kaija fell asleep in the car on the way home and wouldn’t have been able to appreciate it, so I put her in her crib when we got home.This morning, when I went into her room to get her out of her crib, the first thing she did was point to the new sleeping accomodations across the room with a big smile on her face and said “Bed!” I set her down on the bed and of course the first thing she did was stand up on it and start jumping up and down.Nap time came and went. I had put sheets, a blanket and the safety rail on the bed. I tried to let her take her nap there but she was too excited to lay still. I tried reading her stories, singing to her, lying down on the floor next to the bed with a pillow and blanket… nothing worked.She was more cranky than normal tonight, most likely because of the missed nap and because started getting her ready for bed a little later than normal, but I decided to try to put her in the bed anyway. After the pajamas were put on and the stories were read, she snuggled down under the blankets and was asleep before I finished Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.