Way back when I was in a nesting frenzy before R was born, I went shopping for a wardrobe and tallboy. Typically, I am drawn to dark, Indonesian-style furniture. This was initially what I had in mind. After wandering around every single store in a home-maker quadrangle, with ankles ballooned for near take-off, I stepped in to the last store certain I had already picked the winner and that this store was only being entered for completeness. Then I changed my mind. I came across the Punky Jo series. It now no longer exists. I would have bought a complete suite on the day if I'd pre-empted their shut down. Their furniture was sweet and colourful with a choice of quirky handles. It emanated 'happy childhood'. I loved it, and suddenly sparked and settled on the idea that a child's room should look like a child's room, rather than a continuation of the furniture theme of the rest of the house. I chose a lime green and white tallboy with yellow star handles. Mum subsequently bought an unstained wardrobe and painted it with the same colour theme. We bought an extra star handle to add to the wardrobe.
Lately, I've been scanning bed designs for R's big boy bed. It feels overdue. I'm surprised he's nearly four and doesn't have his own bed yet. I guess a combination of variables have led us here, including that he had zero interest in the toddler bed, started co-sleeping again a few months before F arrived, and that tri-co-sleeping was a sanity saver for at least the first four months of F's life. However, F is now 14 months old, has been sleeping solo for 6 months, and yet R is still co-sleeping. I guess the dominant motivator for R to move into his own bed now is that I can foresee F scaling his cot soon and his next sleeping arrangement is likely to be co-sleeping again. I suspect F has about 6 months left in his cot. If I'm lucky.
From then on, any hope of quality sleep for me depends on R being happily ensconced in his own bed. So, a few weeks ago, we took an evening jaunt to the home-maker quadrangle again to view the bed I'd decided on. It was actually a new release, so new it wasn't even on display. I bought it anyway. Today, it arrived! Yay!
Of course, this means the impending slow torture of cleaning up my old bedroom (which has accumulated a year's worth of junk), dismantling and re-assembling my bed (ugh), and assembling R's new bed.
I seriously doubt he'll sleep in it, regardless. I'm expecting that we will negotiate that he at least starts his night sleeping in his bed, but can join me later in the night if he wakes up and wants to share. And eventually, he'll just get used to it until one day he'll sleep through. My hope is that this happens before F gets over his cot, metaphorically and literally.
By the by, while I was tracking down the pic of the tallboy, I stumbled across this pic of me 39 weeks pregnant with R. Never mind the abundant hair or how unhappy I looked (I wasn't unhappy at all, btw). Look how young I looked!
Another later–in–life–mum friend and I were speculating the other day about whether parenting is aging or whether we were just on the doorstep of obvious aging anyway. We'll never know. Probably a mix of both, methinks. It's merely a matter of vanity anyway. I'd rather look 100 with my littles than look 5 years younger and not be parenting.
