When I go to bed, there are two people in my bed: David and me.
When I wake up, it’s anyone’s guess who I’ll find there: definitely one child, potentially both. It’s sort of like the wild nights from many years ago, when you go out and drink too much and wake to a surprise in the morning. Except there’s nothing surprisingly
about my kids sneaking into my bed because it happens every night. I sleep right through the whole thing: they are stealthy and silent. And if they didn’t take over the whole freaking bed, I wouldn’t even mind particularly. To be fair, Seconda figured out early on that she should lie horizontally at the bottom of the bed at our feet, “that’s where I fit perfectly!” By which she means, it takes us all night to realize that she’s there. Primo, however, is HUGE and wildly energetic in his sleep, so we get treated to elbow jabs and swift kick to the ribs and head all night long. I wish I could figure out how to burn so many calories when I sleep: I could make my fortune selling that formula.
So, what ends up happening is, if Prino sneaks into our bed, we notice at some point during the night, when we wake to a throbbing pain in our side and find his massive foot there, and because it is way easier to move ourselves than to pick him up and move him without waking him, David or I will relocate to Primo’s bunk bed. Yes, it is ridiculous but we are tired and its just the easiest thing to do. Besides, I hate to confess it but I love having a whole bed to myself and the kids’ room, with the noise machine and room-darkening shades, is like a sleep spa. I love it.
The other night, however, something truly ridiculous happened.
The sort of thing that makes you say, Whoa, hold on a minute here, we need t oget our HOUSE IN ORDER.
David and I went to sleep in our martial bed, just the two of us, the way it should be.
In the middle of the night, I woke to a searing pain in my ass and found Primo’s arm flailing around wildly. David had beaten me to the punch, and already snuck into Primo’s bed, but since Primo was particularly feisty, I didn’t think I could manage even with just the two of us in the bed, so I relocated onto the couch.
As I lay there, trying to convince myself that there was nothing so very strange about sleeping on my couch while my son enjoyed the bed, I heard the door to the kids’ room open and heard the unmistakable pitter patter of tiny feet. Tiny four-year old feet.
I watched as Seconda snuck out of her bedroom into my bed, where Primo was already camped out. Being mostly asleep, she didn’t notice and happily laid herself at the foot of the bed, thinking her mother and father were happily sleeping beside her.
My thought at that moment was very clear: “Score! Now I get to sleep in the bunk beds!”
I silently stole into the kids’ bedroom and slipped into the top bunk, above my husband, on the bottom.
And that is how it happened that in the morning, my children woke up, sleeping in a queen bed and David and I woke, as bunkmates in the outer-space-themed bedroom.
Something’s gotta give. I have even considered just giving the kids our bed and taking their, enjoying the luxury of that isolation chamber every night, all long night. But I think what I’ll probably have to do is just build a palette on the floor next to our bed for the kids and tell them the early bird gets the worm and if the palette’s taken, then there’s no more room at the inn. But you know how it goes – I’ll probably build the palette and then end up sleeping there myself.
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