I’m Glad She Wants to be Like Me, But…

I’ll get to the rest of our Christmas stories later, but I must relieve my conscience and confess start with this one.

So, as I mentioned before, the plan was for Ali to get a Big Girl Bed for Christmas.

So, when Ali woke up on Christmas morning (or, rather, when we got tired of waiting for her to wake up and we woke her up at 9:30 am), she was sleeping in this:

And then, while I was fixing lunch for Chris’ family and Ali was playing with all of her Santa loot, Chris went upstairs and assembled this:

(because we’re not as talented as my Dad – we couldn’t replace her crib with a BGB during the night without ever waking her up. We’re still pretty novice parents.)

(Oh – and don’t worry – we installed the bed rail before naptime. No need for THAT much of a change.)

We excitedly led Ali upstairs to see her “BIG HUGE SURPRISE!!!!”, and she, as we expected, was completely thrilled.

Her exuberance and excitement led to much celebration to get acquainted with her new big girl bed:
There was frolicking,

Standing,

And falling on one’s knees.

….except, in that last shot, she decided to go ahead and finish the fall (rather thoroughly) and faceplant on the bed.

….except, her trajectory was slightly off.

….and her nose landed squarely on the corner of the footboard.

….in a very concrete manner.

There was much screaming.

MUCH screaming.

Much inconsolable crying.

(And that was all just her Daddy.)

I sat there and rocked her while she screamed her steadily-swelling-nose off, my mind was circularly saying…

”we are going to have matching broken noses. Except hers is going to be worse. She’s going to have a black and blue nose with a nose cast. And it’s all my fault.”

Of COURSE, all of our lunch guests arrived during this screamingly euphorious period of time.

We finally had to pull out all the stops and offer her only-halfway-through-naptime-crying-friend to comfort her hopefully-still-in-one-piece nose:
The up side was, we got to try out the new snuggling option of a big girl bed. …and, we now have a “no jumping or frolicking or falling onto one’s knees or really anything but laying and sleeping on the bed” rule.

And as paranoid as she is, I promise you she will forever follow that rule.

She did say after a little while that it didn’t hurt anymore, but we will probably get an x-ray if she complains anymore or if it looks bad (unless someone can confirm that almost-three-year-olds still just have cartilage in their noses and therefore cannot break them – one of my friends thought that was the case and I am certainly hoping she is right).

Surprisingly though, as much as she holds grudges against all things that hurt her, when it was time for naptime, she couldn’t have been more thrilled to return to the scene of the crime and set off on her Maiden Dream Voyage in BGB:

But she was quite careful as to the trajectory of her head when lying it on the pillow.

It’s not a Merry Christmas till you break your nose on your “best” Christmas present.