New Bed

When moving, it makes sense to change some things in your household. The more you throw away before the move, the less you have to move. For example, it makes sense to dump those college textbooks you’ve been holding onto since your undergraduate days just in case you need to write an essay about structural fundamentalism based on information that hasn’t been updated in ten years.

We did not dump any textbooks in the move. That would’ve made sense. I still have all my old television production textbooks filled with information on running equipment no one has used within this millennium. I doubt I’ll ever use them again, but I’m holding onto them in case my children need to write a report on archaic television production techniques.

We did do a few things that make sense. We moved all the kids into new beds. Abbie moved into a twin bed. Ian moved into Abbie’s old toddler bed. Tory’s crib converted into a toddler bed. Ian’s old crib went back to Ellie’s parents. That’s a net gain of one lost crib, one less bulky object to store, one less heavy object to move, and a few less milligrams of ibuprofen needed to numb the pain after the move.

Giving kids the stress of a new bed combined with a new home to inhabit can be perilous. When dealing with creatures of routine, creatures who define a good day as being exactly like the one before it, creature whose main form of communicating displeasure is screaming at the exact harmonic frequency required to painfully vibrate the eardrum, altering their routine can be hazardous. The kids all seem to have taken the new beds well, though.

We were a little worried for Abbie’s safety moving her from a toddler bed to a twin bed that’s about twice as big and far off the ground. She hasn’t fallen off it yet, and she can climb into it with no problem even though the top of the mattress is level with her chest, so no problem there. She can get lost on a mattress that’s twice as long as she is, but she can fill the new space with some of those stuffed animals we’ve stockpiled and neglected to dump before we moved.

Abbie had a few problems giving up her toddler bed. I had hoped that placing the bed in a new room with new sheets would fool her, but the remaining Dora stickers on the frame gave it away. On the first couple of nights, she’d climb into her old toddler bed and pushed Ian away if he came near. After a few gentle reminders that it wasn’t her bed combined with forcibly shutting her out of the boys’ room, she adjusted to her new expansive sleeping surface.

The boys have had more difficulty adjusting to their new beds. It’s not that they miss their cribs; we were worried they would howl in drowsy confusion as they struggled to find a sleeping surface. The boys have no problem falling asleep; they just don’t sleep in their beds. After two weeks in the new house, I routinely find at least one of them asleep on the floor in the morning. I know they can climb in and out of their beds with no problem, but they apparently prefer the plush carpeting to clean sheets for sleeping. Tory even enjoys sleeping underneath his bed, possibly foreshadowing his preference for the bottom bunk bed in a few years.

My mother suggested moving the boys into bed after they fall asleep, but I let them go. They’re asleep and content, so I have no desire to mess with their routine. I keep laying them in bed for the night, and I trust that eventually they’ll realize a mattress makes a more comfortable sleeping surface. And if they don’t figure that out, we’ll have a net gain of two lost beds to store.