Stop, Drop and Blog

We bought a new mattress set earlier this week. It’s glorious and comfortable and spacious and, yet, only a Queen size.

That’s right. We’ve endured seven years (on Sunday) of marriage on a Full-sized bed. We’re either awesome or stupid. It’s hard to tell. But over the years, the bed has been shrinking — or we’ve just been having more children while simultaneously expanding our waist sizes — and a larger bed was necessary.

We didn’t get all fancy pants. This is our first upgrade, so we just went the more traditional route. We got a Serta Perfect Sleeper Davidson mattress (and box spring); it’s a firm mattress, which we were hoping would be a better fit with my back injury and subsequent pain. We grabbed it for a stupid-awesome price at the Big Lots sale. My dad asked, “So is that your Christmas present to each other?” I realized that it wasn’t and decided, “No, it’s our anniversary present!” Even though we said no presents this year — the price was too good to pass up!

The boys think it’s awesome because it’s big. And it is. FireDad got into bed the first night and, after a brief pause in the darkness said, “Where are you?” We laughed. But we’ve spent seven years mashed together. We’ve spent a number of those years with a baby, a toddler or a big boy sleeping in between us; whether he was nursing or boogery or scared of the boogey man or having leg cramps or couldn’t go sleep in his own bed because his room smelled like puke. We found a way to fit in that little bed, on the mattress that kind of dipped and caved in the middle when we took off the sheets to move her on out of the bedroom. I’m sure we’ll all fit just fine in the new bed — once the boys figure out how to climb onto it as it’s much higher.

2006

And it has changed over the years: the room, the bed, the clutter. Us. I look at the photo of our old bed set, and I wonder who slept there then. I see bits and pieces of us. I see shadows of who we were. In fact, in that photo of our old bedroom style, I can see the book that started me on the path of menu planning and, as the years went on, a true love of cooking. But I also see things that were phases: a baby monitor, country things, empty frames because I was too tired to fill them. I’m still too tired to fill them, so perhaps that isn’t a phase.

2011

The white and red decorative pillows made their way to the new bed set, but so much has changed. You can’t see the cluttered nightstand in the new photo. But it currently holds fire truck erasers, necklaces that aren’t hanging where the country quilt used to be, a phone charger, more empty picture frames, and a taller pile of books, all stacked by the wall. Every time I completely clean it off, it fills up again. Such is our life.

I wonder what our bedroom will look like in another five years — or seven — or seventy.

– __ — __ –

As an added bonus, the underside of our bed is clean. The boys even noticed.

“Hey, BigBrother, look! There’s nothing under their bed!”
“Like nothing?”

BigBrother knelt down next to his brother and took a look; their heads together as they bent to peer under our new bed.

“Wow! I’ve never seen it that clean.”

Busted.