There are few things sweeter than your own cute kid peacefully asleep in his own cute little bed under a darling little blankie that your mom or someone made for him. Wyatt is snoring happily away so I have time to write this.
If he catches me typing he gets mad and pounds the keyboard, unless I am paying attention to him and playing games on the Sesame Street website. He sleeps in our room which is also where our computer is. So if he wakes in the night and he catches me typing, he lets out a sqwak and I put my hands in the air and say, "I'm not typing! No typing going on here!" He will then give me a sleepy, suspicious glance and before snuggling back under his covers.
You might be aghast. "He is FOUR and he still sleeps in the same room with you?" You can blame that one on my husband. When we went to our home-birth class there was a guest speaker who had four kids up to age 7 and they had a "family bed" which consisted of two king mattresses turned sideways. Seriously! So, by comparison, the fact that my husband can't bear to send our boy down the hall to his cold, lonely room, we are not the oddest bunch of grapes on the vine. I did put my foot down after Wyatt's 4th birthday and insist that we finally take down the crib and put up a toddler bed. Still, my husband just couldn't bring himself to let go of that bit of babyhood. I myself had to get out the wrench sets and do all of the disassembly and assembly. He only pitched in after, oh the horror of it, I removed some wood screws. Who knew you shouldn't ever remove screws that are screwed directly into wood?
When I moved in with my husband, he only had a second-hand twin bed and a futon couch that had seen better days, so I brought my 12 year old mattress with me into our union. After awhile, we gained weight and by the time our son was born, the springs had started poking out of the mattress sides. We got a snazzy new mattress with heavy gauge coils that we hoped would stand up to our new girth. We learned from our mattress salesman that high-profile boxsprings were the latest and greatest. People now like their beds to be high up from the ground, sort of like how people feel when driving big SUV's and trucks. Wow, who knew? I kind of liked my low-profile box springs and sitting on the edge of the bed to take off my shoes, but gosh, if I ordered a low-profile box spring would I be one of those people stuck in another decade, like someone who has the same hairstyle they did 20 or 40 years ago, like someone who has puke green carpet and likes it?
We got the high-profile box springs and...our son at age two climbed up to say his [non-verbal] Saturday morning hello, slipped on a blanket, and broke his collar bone. Of course, we took him to our HMO for x-rays and they said he was fine. Only nine days later did they call us and tell us that, oops, a qualified person finally looked at the x-rays and determined that their was a fracture. Grrr!!!! I wouldn't have taken him to the park and a bunch of Halloween parties if I'd known he'd broken his collar bone! So, the moral of my story is, think twice before you buy a high-profile box spring set. AND, the prevailing theory about broken collar bones is that they have found no benefit to wearing a sling, so they really don't have a treatment for this.
Despite that experience, my son loves to jump up and down on our bed. He gets such joy out of that activity. I guess more cautious moms might not let their kids jump up and down on the bed. I know I could buy a mini-trampoline, but they have those at school and other places that we go, so I don't want him to lose that motivational thrill. Some parents have full-sized enclosed family trampolines, but first of all, I don't have a yard. Secondly, my uncle bought one and his homeowner's insurance threatened to cancel him if he didn't get rid of it. Thirdly:
I just get sick and tired of forking out for things. You know what I mean--everytime you turn around some person is recommending this or that fabulous thing you just have to get to help your kid. Then when you buy it he either destroys it or ignores it or it takes some weird expensive battery that I will never get around to replacing. I think every single one of us ASD parents spends until we bleed, though. We spend with hope that our kids will be better of for it and hope that somehow money will be there for us in our retirement years and that we won't have to eat cat food or, even cheaper, eat cookies made from dirt, cooking oil, and salt.
Okay, yeah, woe is me! Poor me! :) A big hug to any and all who read any of my blog stuff! Thanks for being out there!
