Miss H has some exciting transitions on the horizon. At the ripe “old” age of 20 months, we’re just on the cusp of potty training and transitioning her out of her crib. Two monumental life changes for her and for us!

We’ve slowly been starting the potty training process, in a very laid back way. We put her on the potty seat 1-2 times a day, and if she asks to get down she gets down. If she does anything productive on the potty, she gets a potty cookie (i.e. organic little graham cookie shaped like a bunny). We’re letting her more or less take the lead on this right now, as she’s still a little bit on the young side for potty training. However, she is starting to show other signs of readiness: discomfort/annoyance when she has a wet diaper, telling us when she “pee’d it” or “pooped it,” to use her phrases. So that transition is in the works. (As a side note, I always swore I’d never use the word “potty” – ha!)

The other transition point is the crib to bed transition. This is something that as parents we aren’t quite ready for, but I know that we need to be prepared and ready. Miss H is a happy camper in her crib. She loves it. She has never tried to climb out of it, is generally happy when you put her into it, and knows that mommy and daddy sleep in their own bed and that she sleeps in her own bed. It’s great. But I also know that we cannot keep her confined to the four walls of her crib forever. That she’s going to grow up and be a big kid in a big kid bed.

As this has been weighing on my mind a lot lately, we’re getting a plan in place. For starters, Miss H’s room is currently in our (finished) basement, and our bedroom is two floors up in the attic of the house. Making us very far away from her. Even though we have video monitors, I don’t like being this far away from her at night as she gets older. The distance just feels too far, especially as she will start gaining more independence over the next year. So our first step is moving Miss H into a bedroom on the main level of our home, which will place her much closer to our bedroom. Since that room is currently Mr. H’s office, it will cause a lot of changes for us but I am excited about setting up Miss H’s “big kid” room.

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Once we’ve weathered the storm of the room change, we are going to ease Miss H into a toddler bed of sorts by transitioning her crib (instead of buying a different bed right now).

Her current crib looks like this (now, of course, with the mattress at its lowest setting):

And we will be transitioning it to look like this (except our crib isn’t gray):

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I am hopeful we can use the crib as a toddler bed for as long as possible until we are ready to transition to some sort of twin bed. Because the crib is truly Miss H’s “safe place,” I am hopeful that she’ll still feel very safe and happy in it even after we modify it for her.

And, of course, always in the back of my mind is the fact that I do know I would like to have another baby, hopefully in 2015. Because we have very little storage space in our home, being able to use the crib for as long as possible is ideal, as I would like to be able to transition Miss H out of the crib before transitioning a new baby into the house, and we don’t really have space to store the crib in between. Of course my plans are built on a lot of “what if’s” and “maybes,” but this is how I cope with planning and changes – figuring out every possible scenario and really thinking things through.

The biggest fear I have is making changes and having Miss H not transition well through those changes. But so far she’s has always been a really good baby regarding adjusting to different sleeping locations, time changes, different people putting her to bed, etc. So I am hopeful she’ll be able to handle these changes over the next few months. You know, while we’re also working on that whole potty training thing!

I’m excited to report back and share how Miss H handles everything.

What has your experience been like transitioning your LO to a different room and/or bed? Do you have any advice?