Adjusting? Who needs time for that?

We've been trying to get Otter a bit more prepared for the new baby. We've been doing this slowly, talking more and more, over and over, about how the new baby will take all of our time, will cry a lot, will nurse a lot, etc etc. Otter seems complacent about all this, so we know he has no clue, none at all, but we hope that some tiny bit of it sinks in and helps make it a bit less shocking to him.

In line with this, we've also begun helping him learn to fall asleep on his own, without one of us with him the whole time. We explained that we were helping him learn to do this, just as he'd learned to use a cup without a lid and to eat on his own., that it might be hard to learn to fall asleep without Mama or Daddy rubbing his back and talking to him but we would help him.

He's becoming more and more okay with this, chattering away to himself in the crib and then periodically calling out for Mama or Daddy to "come back now", which we do, and check on him, and stay a minute or so and then leave again. It's a slow process but it's going pretty well. (It frees up a lot of our time in the evening too.)

This morning, I thought I'd start preparing him for an eventual move from his crib/family bed sleeping life to a twin bed/occasional family bed sleeping life. Based on past experience, I thought that the new baby might outgrown the bassinet at three or four months old, so we should start now giving Otter three or four months or so to adjust to the idea, then a month or two to actually make the transition.

So on the way to daycare, I said to Otter 'Your cousin K has a special bed that's all his, and when you get big big big, you'll have a special bed too. It'll be a bed just for Otter, no one else, different from Mama and Daddy's bed. You can bring your animals to sleep with you, and we'll get you special sheets."

And the small voice from the carseat says, "PURPLE sheets!"

He proceed to spend the next twenty minutes telling me and then everyone else at daycare that "Otter special bed. Special sheets! Special bed for Otter.... special PILLOW!" which he then demonstrated the use of by lying down with a small Strawberry Shortcake pillow they have at daycare under his head.

I hadn't even though of a pillow. But he was on top of the idea, having clearly thought this through far more completely than I had.

For example, we don't yet HAVE a twin mattress (or anyplace to fit it easily once we get it). I'd planned at some point we'd get from my parents' attic the old twin bed frame of my brother, which comes with an attached bookcase and shelf as the headboard. We'd look into a couple of bed rails, shop around for a sale to get a box spring and mattress... all on some unspecified timetable of MUCH MUCH later than now. I mean, I'm talking about a far distant time after the whole labor delivery and small newborn phase.

I figured we had a few months to plan this all out.

I suspect that instead we'll be scraping up at least a twin mattress soon--in the next two or three weeks--or risk Otter losing all enthusiasm for the plan or, alternately, driving us nuts with his requests for his special bed (with special pillow).

And with purple sheets; don't forget.