A Bed Raising

We're dismantling the kiddos' toddler beds today, after 4 years of nightly service. And before we started to take the beds apart, Mama raised the mattress to baby-crib level, at Sis's request. She had wanted to see what her bed looked like when she was a baby.

A baby.

Two babies. In one crib, in the beginning.

I remember the night my mom, not yet Gommie, and Mama, not yet Mama, had built those cribs. I was incredibly pregnant and uncomfortable and propped myself up in a corner taking pictures and even napping while they built the two cribs. Seeing them completed was unreal, but certainly forced a kind of recognition of the reality that there would eventually be two babies in those cribs, if all went well.

And then, there they were. Two babies, in one crib, at that time in our room for easier feedings. So small that there was still lots of crib leftover. The sun would shine in on them, swaddled in their striped hospital blankets. For fun (for us!), we'd put stuffed critters in there with them during awake times and they would just stare and reach. And attached to the crib was their nighttime "sleep sheep" that would make a variety of sounds that were necessary, for us, for them to sleep. Mobiles and other things came and went but "sleep sheep" and later the starry turtle were nighttime necessities. Again, more a ritual for us than for them, but whatever works, right?

Pretty soon they learned to roll some and, on the day we woke to find Sis kicking Bud in the head and him unable to roll away, we moved the crib into their room and separated them into their own beds. Where there was still more crib than baby. And again, we put a few toys in their cribs and we'd know they were awake when we could hear the aquarium toy in Bud's bed or the rattle of the dragon in Sis's crib. Later, as they could roll and then sit up, we lowered the mattresses to the lowest point. And the day they crawled over the rail, took off all their clothes, and danced in the middle of the room, we took the rail off to make big kid toddler beds.

Now, there is more kiddo than bed and it's time to move to big kid twin beds. The awareness that it was time for a change has been slower in coming than the epiphanies of the head-kicking or rail-crawling incidents. We noticed that they just didn't seem comfortable, seem to fit, in their beds anymore, which is partly because their number of critter companions has grown, but also because they've grown. And so, we bought new beds. Over and over again this morning, the kids have asked questions, obviously concerned about the change (despite lots of prep, with the choosing of new sheets and comforters and looking at the boxes of the new beds on the porch). "Why are you taking my bed apart?" "But I only like my old sheets." "I can't sleep if I don't see Sis." "Are you going to give away my critters too?" "You're not going to bunk them, right?" (right.)

And Mama and I are anxious too, for other reasons: are the new beds sturdy enough? should we have kept shopping around? how will we arrange them in the room? will the kids sleep?

And how did our little babies get to be so big?