Sleepless in the Big Bed

Yes, she's eating a bagel in bed. Sue me.

Hey everybody, after hearing me talk about it for how many months now, you finally get to see a picture of the girls' new shared bed! Last weekend we FINALLY got out to the mattress store, laid on a bunch of beds, and the mattress we chose was delivered later that day. I had bought sheets months ago, so we put the waterproof "envelope" on the bed, made it as usual on top of that, and voila, the girls have their own bed to share! The picture above was taken the next morning, so you can tell it worked. ha ha ha!

Actually, The Bug woke up once each night for the first two nights and I was so half asleep that I just picked her up and brought her in bed with me until morning. The third day Sweet Pea said, "hey, stop taking The Bug out of our bed! I don't have anybody to snuggle when she's in the big bed and I have to go up to your bed in the morning!" So for the past two nights I've been laying down in the girls' bed with The Bug when she wakes up and sits up. She usually falls right back to sleep, but last night she woke up for a second time after I'd only been back in "the big bed" for half an hour. At that point I was like, "screw it, just come up into my bed," but she didn't want to go! I took her anyway because all I wanted to do was lie down on MY BED, on MY PILLOW, and go back to sleep. The Bug sat up looking longingly at her bed and fussing a little bit. I told her, "go ahead, you can go back to your bed and snuggle in with Sweet Pea." Eventually that's what she did! Hooray!

Now, here's the funny/sad part. The Bug was driving me insane when she was doing nonstop night nursing and I was SO ready to get her out of my bed - but once she weaned she became a super snuggly little bunny and I loved having her there at night, even though she often put her little head on my pillow, bonking into my head in the process. Now that she's in the sibling bed with Sweet Pea, I can't sleep! There's no wiggly warm little body next to me, bonking into me and playing with my hair when she half-wakes and apparently I really miss that. Sigh.

In other news: Sweet Pea told me yesterday, "Mom, I need more chores. I want more responsibility." Um, okay! Then she started naming off everything she could think of that she could possibly help me with and I said, "why don't we start with just a few," but she insisted that she wanted to help me with just about everything. Works for me, though now that I'm teaching her some of this stuff she's not actually that interested in doing it. Figures.

School is nearly over - hard to believe. I'm looking forward to a summer of play and art, but first I'm working my bootie off trying to get through our accumulated STUFF and clean the house (at least the downstairs - the upstairs is actually nearly spotless compared to downstairs anyway) before The Bug's birthday party! Slipshod did a bunch of sorting in the garage last weekend and helped me out a bunch. He set up a large folding table we had out there and stacked stuff on it that was previously scattered all around the garage - stuff I'd been telling him Iwas going to Freecycle for the past year or so. With all of that in one place now, it's super easy to go see what's there and then post it right away on Freecycle. I've also gone through a bunch of the boxes inside the house for the same reason, and in the past two days I've freecycled some of my old clothes (some of which were too big, YEAH), a slew of sippy/kid cups, a couple kids' cereal bowls, 9 kid dresses, our Leapfrog baby items (learning gym & learning table), a bouncy chair/rocker, and two baby ride-on toys. It felt especially good to realize that out of all of the kids' items I freecycled, the only things that were not given to us were the cups. Somehow it feels especially good to pass along things that were previously given to us, either new or as hand-me-downs. It's nice to see those items go on to a new life with yet another family.

Noticing how much of what we gave away we did NOT buy (and looking around at the toys/books remaining the same is reflected in the things we chose to keep) also vindicates me in my assertion to my mother that we are not the free-spending thoughtless consumerists she believes we are. Yes, our house is overflowing with children's toys and books, but probably at least 80% of them come from family and friends - mostly family, thankyouverymuch.

There is MUCH more sorting and freecycling to be done, but I feel GREAT having given away what I have so far. Our living room looks drastically better (I got rid of a whole stack of boxes that was clogging up the main walkway) and getting part of the downstairs a bit cleaner gives me hope that I can get the rest of it clean as quickly. Here's hoping!