Just like that, our baby is out of her crib.

We have been toying with the idea of moving Chloe out of her crib, mostly because I read an article that suggested if your child is able to climb in or out of her crib, there is a high risk of injury. Nowhere did the article mention the child’s ability to handspring off of the low end and superfly onto one of her older, unsuspecting siblings lying oblivious on a cushion on her floor.

It was time. I’m just not sure I was ready to say goodbye to it all. Knowing the crib was coming down, the dresser and change table would all be a distant memory. It seemed as though I blinked and my newborn baby girl will be turning nine in August and our third child will soon be off to Clown College.

I wondered how the switch into a big girl bed would go over with Chloe.

She hopped out of the bed and then her room a couple of times at nap time to ask what everyone was doing. Predictable. When I hadn’t heard anything for a ten minute stretch, I snuck down expecting to see her sleeping peacefully surrounded by a new comforter, new pillow and old standby–Rompers the plush dog.

Instead I found a two and a half year old with a smorgasbord of diaper creams, lotions and powders, a pair of adult bifocals, an Architect’s rendering of our basement, a screw and two nuts or two nuts and one screw, lined up neatly across her lap like a set of surgical tools. I have no idea what she had been masterminding so many months behind bars but she clearly had a plan of mass destruction in the works and was ready to take action.

The kids are growing up before my eyes. Hanna asked if during this transition period we could throw away her dresser and replace it with a make-up table.

Thank God my six year old told me this morning, “Mommy, girls go to College to get more knowledge. Boys go to Jupiter to get more stupider.”

That’s more like it.