My Little Boy is Growing Up (and getting on my last nerve)

Well, the day finally came that our older son Christopher moved to a big boy bed. It didn't come without a fight; I didn't think he would be okay with it. But he was apparently more than ready. Not that he had a choice, anyway. The night before he had jumped so high in his crib that the springs broke and he couldn't sleep in it anymore.

So we went to a second-hand children's store and lo and behold, there it was: a fire truck bed. Christopher ran to it and threw his self on top of it, as if he were marking his territory. It was a moot point; there was only one other person in the store, and she looked old enough to be my mom.

He begged and pleaded, which was pointless because we were going to get it for him anyway. It was only $80 and in really good shape.

I ended up calling my dad to come with me later that day and help pick up the bed. It was able to disassemble into pieces, but the pieces were still too big for my car. So he went with me, and after picking it up, I went to pick up the boys to go home. As soon as Christopher knew his bed was in the back of Paw Paw's van, he wanted to go with Paw Paw, but we had to take the seats out to make room for the bed.

I called my husband to meet us in town after he got off of work to transfer the bed to the back of his truck. As soon as Christopher knew his bed was in the back of the truck, he wanted to go with Daddy. He didn't want his bed getting lost, and being out of sight of it, if only for fifteen minutes, would have broken the (already broken) chain of custody. He screamed all the way home.

The first night he only got out of bed three times, the second night, once. Last night, however, he was doing all he could to stay awake, and kept jumping up and out of bed. The last time he got out of bed was as he was attempting to climb on the "roof" of the truck and fell off, hitting his head on the carpeted floor. He was fine, but he was mad at his bed for "throwing him off".

However, that hasn't stopped him from practically living on it since it came home. It's his bed, his truck, and when he drapes his VeggieTales quilt over it, it becomes his secret fort, where he can look out the windshield and watch people go by. I watch him play and I'm glad he has the imagination to play for hours with a molded piece of plastic that is his bed. He giggles as people walk by his secret fort and he touches their legs, his little arm a flash as he pulls it back into his fort. As he grows, I hope he still has a little mischief in his blood, because even as an adult, I yearn for the days when I could build my fort and just ignore the world.