Moving Day

This weekend was moving day for the kids. No, we didn’t ship them off to live elsewhere; instead we had a bit of bedroom rearranging.

Ever since Rebecca had a play date over at her friend Lydia’s house, she has been asking for a room just like Lydia’s. Jake too has wanted a room of his own for quite sometime. Max, meanwhile, has gotten tired of the twin thing and has even fired Rebecca on one or two occasions. Mind you I have no idea where that came from. We certainly don’t watch the Apprentice. When he does it I find that it is almost impossible to keep a straight face. He storms up, glowers at you and gravely pronounces you as fired. Even I have been fired, but it was retracted when I said “Great, now I don’t have to feed you.” Anyway, back to moving day.

For a while we have wanted to separate Jake and Nate. Initially it was a very good thing when we parked Nate in with Jake. Nate was ecstatic to be with his big brother and Jake was less inclined to wander into our room in the middle of the night. But Jake has a tendency to talk (Literally, the kid never stops talking after the first week of summer vacation I’m wiped out from the constant barrage from Jake.)and it was keeping Nate up at night.

So the idea was to put Rebecca in the guest room, Max would move in with Nate and Jake would get the bedroom that used to be occupied by Max and Rebecca. Max would get Jake's old bed, Rebecca would use the lovely four poster already in the guest room and we would bunk up Max and Rebecca’s old beds which would free up space in the room for a desk for Jake.

Jake, Max and Rebecca thought it was a very good plan. Rebecca even understood that when we have house guests she would be temporarily relocated somewhere else. Then there was Nate. The one child who not be moved objected to the whole idea, which brought the whole thing to a grinding halt. This would not work in everybody was not on board. After some close questioning I found out the reason for this objection. It was the Legos. Jake and Nate have a good sized plastic bin filled with Legos. At first I tried to segregate Jake and Nate’s individual Lego kits, but it proved futile and every thing got mixed together.

Weeks passed and I couldn’t come up with a workable solution. I could just pull the I’m the momma and what I say goes routine, but I wanted it to work. I didn’t want Nate resenting Max. Then it hit me, we could just leave the Legos in Nate and Max’s room. Jake could come in and play with them and still have his own room.

Larry and I brought it up at dinner on Friday and it was a go. Nate was all for the move.

So this weekend I have cleaned out the guest room closet, disassembled a changing table, turned Max and Rebecca’s old beds into bunk beds (with some crucial help from Larry, these things don’t lift themselves), made the dynamic duo weed out some of their toys, did some stealth chucking of old and busted things, sorted through endless clothes and badgered Jake and Nate into cleaning out their closet.

And the result: heaps of stuff to go into the attic, two small boxes of clothes remaining to be sorted (Max got burnt out after the first batch) and some very happy children.