We're Gonna Need a Bigger Bed

Did you totally get that I'm mocking the famous line from jaws with the title of this post?  No?  Oh, well, I tried.

I can't remember exactly when it happened, but sometime over the past few years our sleep habits got totally messed up.  Patty and I would sleep in my bed.  Casey would sleep on the couch.  JT would sleep on the love seat.  See, totally messed up.  I mainly blame this on Casey's last deployment during which I let both kiddos sleep with me....for safe keeping.  It made sense at the time, but now, not so much.

A couple months ago I had the brilliant idea to rearrange our bedroom so that we could bring both of their toddler beds in and situate them next to our bed.  I'm not going to lie, there were a lot of tear filled nights as the kids began to transition to this new arrangement.  It wasn't perfect, but it worked.  Except, Patty was now just a little too big for her toddler bed and she often complained about that.  And her bed had to be close enough to my side of the bed that I could reach over and touch her.  And that meant getting in and out of the bed was not easy for me.  I have a bad hip and let's just say this arrangement was a beotch to deal with.  But, still, it worked better than the previous setup.

When we moved into this house a little over four years ago, both kids were in cribs.  The cribs fit side by side on the wall between their room and our room.  Every night, my babies were just a few inches of sheet rock away from me.  It was peace of mind, really it was.  But, since both of the kids are much bigger now, we started talking about getting twin beds and happily moving them back into the bedroom they shared as babies.  No one had slept in that room for a very long time and it was completely overrun by toys.  Something had to give. 

I knew this plan was destined to fail from the minute we began discussing it.  I wanted to buy a king sized bed for our room and move our queen bed into their room.  At least that way some of us would get a good nights sleep each night.  And everyone would get to sleep in a real bed.  Casey, on the other hand, wanted to buy bunk beds for the kids room.  After looking closely at several bunk beds, I put a stop to that idea.  Somehow we landed on the twin bed plan.  Really, I don't know what I was thinking.  Of course, all of this went down in February when we were all sick.  Guess I will blame it on the crud I had last month. 

I ordered twin size platform beds, the kind with drawers underneath.  The kids love the drawers.  They have toys in them.  Go figure.  They even like their new sheets.  Magenta for Patty.  Electric blue for JT.  I love the sheets, too.  I picked them out and they remind me of bright Easter egg colors.  The kids could care less about the color of their sheets.  We even had a new satellite receiver installed in their room so they would have the comfort of Disney JR at all hours of the day and night.  JT is not fond of this because he can no longer watch DVDs on that tv.  But, he'd been watching Wall-E on repeat so I don't consider it too terrible a loss.

After all the planning and attempts to make them love it, you know what?  They hate it.  They absolutely hate sleeping in their beds all alone.  Just to get them to fall asleep in their beds requires us to lay down with them.  And I must be spoiled because my whole body aches after I've spent any time in those twin beds.  Or maybe I'm just getting old.

We're really no better off than we started.

Right now, Patty is stretched out next to me on the couch where she is bound to fall asleep any minute.  JT is piled up in his bed playing games or watching a movie on his Kindle while the Disney channel blares loudly.  I have tried to get him into his bed and wait him out.  I keep thinking he'll eventually fall asleep on his own and it hasn't happened yet.  Casey is snoring happily in Patty's bed, wonder if I should wake him.  Maybe, just maybe I'll get to sleep in my bed all alone tonight!  Well, I might be able to sleep for a few hours, then one of them is bound to wake up, realize they are all alone and then come barrelling into our room and onto the bed.