Sleeping arrangements

Z's first bed was a lot like this.
I would carry her around the house with me.
If she gets her way her next bed will have a trundle and a duvet that looks like a giant zipper.

A Monday notable in its mundanity. (Cue song: "Mundane Monday" ... you are welcome for the earworm.) Not even any sports practice to get in the way of a long uneventful evening at home. Both adults at home, collaborating on dinner, splitting music practice duties. O had all the time he wanted to flop around and not make any forward progress on anything, an important activity that he too often has to forgo as a member of this hectic entourage.

Then Z couldn't get to sleep at night. She of the eternal complaint of exhaustion. I don't know if it is just that our routine has suddenly shifted. She knows the winterbusy is done and now ... what? Does that keep her up at night? Or is she worried about something she won't reveal? Or is it, most likely I think although she denies it, that we told her on Sunday that she will ... wait for it ... get her own room this summer!

They've always shared a room. When they were small, they mostly co-slept with us, then at 2? 3? were weaned into their own beds. We got O into his own bed by buying him a giant blue plastic race car bed off of Craigslist - a very exciting big boy bed that has long since been passed on to the neighbors. She had a little futon in one corner. He had a futon inside the big blue car on the other end of the room. Now they have a bunk bed. Having a shared room helped them feel secure at night, and it made bedtime reading a cozy point of family connection. The third bedroom was a grown-up office for a while but eventually became a playroom. The small fourth room houses the tv, messy bookshelves, and laundry folding.

Arbitrarily, we had told her she would get her own room after 5th grade. But I had no idea what a big person she would already be now, just turned 10. Big in stature -- her head at my chin, her feet in my shoes -- but big on the inside too. She is a person becoming full of herself and her own way of being in the world, and she deserves some privacy -- and a place apart to be sent to when she can't stop herself from terrorizing her brother.

She spent part of the evening shopping for beds on the Ikea website (he'll keep the bunk bed), so I am sure she is excited, and maybe those thoughts are flying around in her brain. In the middle of the night she came in and crawled into bed with me. And I wonder if maybe she is reliving the story of her growing independence too. I miss those days of little Z curled up next to me in the night. I miss the long nursing relationship we had, and all the lullabyes I used to sing. I am so inexpressably glad that we had those times.

O is not so sure he is ready for his own room, so there may be a new stage of "sleep weaning" to got through, but I know he is actually going to LOVE having his own space, free of sisterly imposition. He may even love it more than her.

David and I will actually be inheriting the room the kids share now -- largest room even though not the "master" -- so there will be a lot of camping out during the long rearrangement this summer. Should be exciting.

Reading: Me, no. The kids, though, read a ton during Mundane Monday

Writing: Yes, but not ToT.

Dinner: Hash made from the leftover meat and seared peppers and onions from Sunday's tacos and a bunch of yellow potatoes. And a simple salad.

Soundtrack: Joshua Bell station on Pandora

Random thing: The room the kids share now was, once upon a time, my office. My desk was under the front window. My desk now is under the front window in my bedroom -- maybe 8 feet? 10 feet? farther to the west. I look out and see the same tree, the same stretch of sidewalk and street, yet I have completely distinct memories of each of these views. The easterly view was associated with different writing and different worries. I would sit, procrastinating on a project in the afternoon, waiting for David to arrive home on his bicycle from his job on Coventry, eager for the distraction. I was much less connected to the street and neighborhood -- had had fewer personal encounters with that big old tree and hadn't yet even imagined having a son who I would teach to ride a bike on that sidewalk. The squirrels would sit in the tree and chuff at me angrily the same then as now, though. The really seem to find my presence in the window an affront.