Ready For Big Girl Bed?

OK, not this kind of bed. Her room is too small. But in the future if my little girl wants to be a princess, mommy will build her the best castle in the world. I am talking about a toddler bed like these! How cute is this room? And check out this slide show. Love them.

My original plan was to let her skip toddler bed, and move on to a twin size bed directly. But I am changing my mind the other night. Little caterpillar goes to bed pretty late, later than all my friends' babies. We have dinner around 7pm, her bath time is around 8pm, then after that, she will play for a while, normally 'reads' lots of her books, or flip through some big scrapbooks. We try to put her to bed around 9pm, she normally fall asleep soon after finishing her bottle. The other night, I was helping her reading her favorite books, now she has to be the one turn the pages, points to something and I will explain. Anyway, we were on the floor reading, all of a sudden, she got up, walked to her crib, sucking her thumb, looking really tired. She hugged her crib while staring at me, like she was saying "mommy, I am tired, ready to go to bed. Could you pls put me in there?" Ohhh, my little girl is growing up. I picked her up, and put her in the crib, no more fighting or screaming, she quietly stood by the railing, pointed to her bottle. She knows how to say bottle, but when she is tired, she won't say a word. I grabbed the bottle, and told her to lie down, she looked at me, and turned around and lay down, then opened her little mouth. My girl is definitely growing up. I was overwhelmed, and almost want to pick her up and kiss her. But I had to respect her as a big girl now. Sad, but proud at the same time!
The next morning, I told Stubborn that we need to get her a toddler bed, so she can crawl in and out easily. Then where can we hang her Choo Choo Train organizer thing? She loves that thing, squeezes the cheeks and the nose all the time, take her toys out of the pockets and put them back. I don't want to change her environment so dramatically at this early stage. Then I thought about altering this crib. I can remove the front railing, drill new holes on the frame to lower the mattress even more. And if necessary, I can add an extra 2 by 2 at front, of course stained the same color. This could work. Well, I will need to do this on weekend, with really bad weather. Yes, I can do it. I am still looking for a perfect little dresser or bookshelf thing to replace the changing station, and I have been working on a tiny set of table and chairs. Her room will go through some major transformation soon. My girl is really growing up!