New developments: We're moving to the era of two and three word sentences now. Samantha noticed a new scar on my arm (burned it on the heating system last week) and said "Daddy boo boo", for example.

As expected, Samantha rolled out of her crib in the night once or twice the day I took the side rail off. At least we thought at the time that she might have rolled out -- she was on the floor crying her head off when we went in to the room. Well, not the floor -- we had pillows piled up two deep all along the crib. Now I wonder if she didn't just climb out because she was looking for her pacifier and throw a tantrum when she couldn't find it.

Anyway, we felt certain at the time that she'd rolled out and would hurt herself, so we rigged up a long bolster pillow the length of the crib along the side to keep her in. It was low enough for her to climb over but high enough that she wouldn't roll over it at night and tied to the crib on both ends. That worked pretty well for the first couple of nights, until one of the ties tore off and it came loose.

Finally we decided yesterday to take the plunge and move her out of the crib and into a toddler bed. So we went out and bought one and I assembled it last night and started disassembling the crib so we could move it out. I'm sure we're going about this all wrong, and that we're supposed to leave both beds in the room for a week and make a slow transition from one to the other, but instead we're trying it cold turkey and hoping that she won't be too traumatized by the switch from a crib to her bed. I think that once she gets used to it she'll be fine, but if there's really a problem we can get an inexpensive second crib mattress and give her the choice of which one to sleep in for a while.