Monkey Business

It's been an interesting couple of days, folks.  On Friday night, when Matt and I were chatting with the babysitter after coming home from Matt's office Christmas party, we both laughed hilariously when she suggested that Alice had been trying to crawl out of her crib earlier in the evening.  Boy, did we laugh! Then we shifted uncomfortably in our seats and changed the subject. On Saturday afternoon, Matt put Alice down for her nap, only to be greeted, 30 seconds later, by Alice standing triumphantly in the doorway exclaiming, "hi!".  Twice. On Saturday night, I put Alice into her crib and then watched with horror from the door as my 17-month-old threw her leg up onto the crib rail with the ease of a cowboy mounting his horse, hoisted her whole body over the crib rail, and then let herself down onto the floor as gently and soundlessly as a bank robber.  It was actually pretty impressive.

Not wanting her to get hurt, Matt and I each shed a tear for our old friend, the crib, and took the mattress out of the frame and put it on the floor.  Then, very simply and in a loving yet authoritative tone, we explained to Alice that she would be sleeping there from now on, and that it was time to go to sleep. She nodded her head, snuggled onto the mattress, and drifted to sleep, waking the next morning at 9:30 with a delightful giggle.  Or......we said "good night" and plopped her on the mattress; she started screaming bloody murder; we tried to sprint as fast as we could in order to beat her out of the room and shut the door; she breezed past us and and booked it into the hall.  We picked her up and put her back on the mattress. She leaped up and ran into the hall. We put her back. She ran out.  We did this only about nine more times (I consider this a victory: I've seen enough Supernanny to know that could go on for hours) and then she thankfully got the point. We could hear her puttering around in her room for about an hour, occasionally proclaiming "no, no, no!" or "uh-oh!" to her books and/or stuffed animals, and then, miraculously, she fell silent.  When I peeked in at about 9:00, I discovered her fast asleep like this:

 

About half an hour later, I peeked in again to see if it was possible for a human to stay asleep while half-standing and half-face-down in a recliner without having previously consumed at least 3 forties, and I found her like this: 

 

I was trying to get a better, less blurry picture when her eyes snapped open.  Crying, consoling, and reading books followed. 

Speaking of reading, should I be concerned that this is Alice's very favorite thing to read these days?

Not the whole The Very Hungry Caterpillar book, mind you.  Just the Saturday page.  You know, the day the caterpillar eats all the junk food and then gets a stomach ache. Do we not eat enough Goldfish crackers and Christmas "coo-coos" and bacon around here?  She points to each food on the page and makes us tell her what it is.  Over and over and over and over.  She even said "pee-kul" once.  

Wanting to be sure that Alice wasn't feeling too deprived, we decided to hit the ice cream parlor before going to the zoo to see the Zoo Lights display on Sunday night. 

 

Alice is all about the smooching these days. 

 

And she's none too picky about whom she's smooching either.  (Again, should I be concerned?)

 

We're not sure what was up with this lights display that spelled "Alice", but you bet we took a picture in front of it!

 

It's a good thing that Alice knows how to say "light" (which comes out more like "liiiiiiiigh") and "wow", because those two words were repeated alternately pretty much the whole night. 

 

She liked the snakes.

And was captivated by the fish.

 

If only she had been so inspired by our trip to the zoo that she had decided to remain in her crib for all future bedtimes as a display of solidarity with the animals in confinement.  No such luck.  But actually, she is getting used to the new arrangement much more quickly than we expected.  It's Matt and I who are having trouble adjusting.