Where's Sadie?

Right now, Sadie LOVES her stuffies. She carries them around everywhere... and throughout the day I find trails of her stuffies in different rooms all over the house. In the morning, i'll wake up and then see if she is awake. As always, she is awake and when I open the door, she is on her bed playing with her dolls and stuffies. And before she goes to bed, i'm normally not with her, but my guess is she plays with her stuffies until she falls asleep because when I woke her up from her nap yesterday, I find this....

When I put her to bed, she usually likes having 2 or 3 of her stuffies laying beside her. I guess this time, she wanted all of them around her. Can I also add the fact that she's been so good in the mornings and especially at bed time??! I'm finally developing a routine for her for bedtime... she has dinner, wait a half hour or so then bath time. After bath time, I let her watch some t.v or play for a half hour.

We then brush our teeth (which she has been such a team player... who knew getting her to say "cheese" and "aaahhh" would actually work). So no more wrestling to get her teeth brushed. I've actually let her hold her toothbrush while I "help" her brush her teeth. So far so good :).

After our teeth are brushed, we pick out a bedtime book (mostly it's In the Night Garden book), she sits on her bed under her covers and we say a prayer. She's gotten so used to saying prayer that she will actually get in bed and lay her book on her lap then fold her arms and wait for mommy to say prayer. It's the cutest thing! So after prayer, we read a couple pages of the book and she closes the book and says "nigh nigh" grabs her blankie and lays down with her bottle.

I'm trying to figure out how to get her off the bottle but in the mean time getting her to bed without screaming tantrums is good enough. Baby steps, I guess you can say. Next step will have to be the bottle.

I am so happy about how things are going with her. I used to leave her door open and the hallway light open just incase she was crying or anything but Mike brought up the idea of maybe leaving her door closed. I was a little hesitant to do that cause I'm always worrying about her but it would def save me waking up at 3 or 4 in the morning with her tugging on my side of the bed and waking up. When I left her door open, she would wake up in the middle of the night and walk to our bedroom and crawl into bed with us. I was fine with it till she would actually stay awake and I would get no sleep. So I tried the whole leaving the door closed and it's been a success so far.

There is light at the end of the tunnel, and I can finally see it! haha