Musical beds

See what happens when I don't have a thing driving me to write? I don't write.

The last thing was my last work program. Not that anyone is really all that interested in what I do on a day to day basis, but it gave some idea of my life on the road. But as soon as the program ended, I didn't have anything compelling to write about, so I didn't write.

Now I don't really have anything all that compelling to write about, but today's subject is somewhat amusing, so I thought I'd put figurative pen to paper once again.

The life of a three-year-old is rife with an incomprehensible nature to adults. Why do they do this or that? Seemingly, because they can.

Case in point - bedtime. I probably have mentioned this before, but for new readers, those that haven't delved into the depths of the archives, hanging on my every word, it bears stating again. The boys don't have their own beds.

They do have cribs that they've grown out of. (And for all of you linquists, running around aghast at the idea that he just ended a sentence with a preposition - that's how he talks. Deal with it.)(Notice how I just referred to myself in the third person? One often doesn't get to do this in conversation, but with the written word, possibilities abound.) So they've been sleeping in the guest bedroom in a queen-sized bed. Or, more properly, they are supposed to be sleeping in the guest bedroom in a queen-sized bed.

At bedtime, it is their wont to go to sleep in the green bed. The green bed because it has a green bedspread on it. The bed in the guest room has a blue bedspread on it, and thusly became known as the blue bed. The green bed resides in Theresa's and my room. Occasionally their sister joins them in the green bed at bedtime, although more often she'll go to sleep in her bed, or occasionally, lying on her bear rug on the floor. (For all lovers of animals, the bear was not real. It was some sort of synthetic fiber white bear.)

Although king sized, even a king sized bed has difficulty accomodating five comfortably. So when Theresa and I go to bed, I pick up various children placing them appropriately in various bedrooms throughout the house. (Doesn't that make it sound like we have this huge place, and there are sleeping kids just scattered everywhere?) This allows Theresa and I a nice pre-warmed bed to slide into. With the idea that the warmth ends much before we do, and we have to turn our pillows over (with any luck) because they are soaked with sweat because our children sweat like pigs through their scalp when covered by a green bedspread (or a blue one I suppose, for that matter) leaving large patches of uncomfortable moisture. I said "with any luck" in the previous sentence, because if they didn't have their head on the pillow, then that means you're sleeping on the large patch of uncomfortable moisture. Unless, by chance, they put their head where the pillow should have been, then perhaps the large patch of uncomfortable moisture could be covered by said pillow. Anyway, I think you get the idea. Moisture. Large patch. Uncomfortable.

Sometimes, though, things go differently. Sometimes, after being placed in the green bed, because they so desperately wanted to go to bed there, as Theresa and I watch television downstairs, we'll see a wraith-like being drift across the hall into the guest bedroom. But, likely as not, we never see anything, and when we go to bed, one or both of the boys have found their way to the blue bed.

Inevitably, when I wake up in the morning, generally at almost 6:30 on the dot, I awake to "I'm hungry". "Daddy, it's time to get up". And Theresa? Nowhere to be seen. My wife has morphed into two three-year-olds. Generally, I sleep through the hows and the whys. But the result remains the same.

When I mention this to some, I get the expected response - "Can't you make them sleep in their own bed?" Mattea went through the same thing, and now she sleeps in her own bed. The boys will too. And when they do, I'll miss waking up to "I'm hungry". "Daddy, it's time to get up". I'll likely never hear it again.