The Bunk Room Realized

Once upon a time, I was one of those moms, perusing the latest Pottery Barn Kids catalog, dreaming about coordinating paints and room decor, everything perfect and organized, a "theme" accented here and there around the room, beautifully painted pictures that played into the theme of the room, and of course...it was all spotless!  When Zac moved into a "big boy bed" on his second birthday he was the recipient of many Pottery Barn and Pottery Barnesque items to create this "perfect" room.  And when Ben joined him in bunk-bed-life a couple of years later, I was able to pull off the coordination again.  {sigh} It was nice.

But then, do you know what happened?  Well, I will tell you.  Those selfish boys wanted to make the room their own!!  They started asking for weird blankets, like Spiderman, that did not match the bedspread!  Next came the desire for Star Wars Clone Wars and super hero posters, and then they had the audacity to want to put up pieces of their favorite personal artwork (read: every single picture they ever drew or painted).  At first I balked.  But...but...your room is so perfectly decorated!  It has fire truck paintings that nicely compliment the red and blue checkered quilt on the bed with the plush fire truck accent pillow (all in coordinating reds and blues of course)!!!  Yes.  That is pretty much the idiotic train of thought I had in the beginning.  Fortunately, I quickly realized that perfectly coordinating, spotless, character-free bedrooms, while The Pottery Barn might have you believe differently, are for nurseries, when the children who live in them are too small to care about the decor so you, as Mom, can have all the control.  If you are a mother who has successfully maintained a coordinated room and kids who revel in the Pottery Barnness of it all, I applaud you...let me in on your secret!

What really got me on the happiness-in-chaos track is that I remembered how, when we were younger, my sister had one wall of her room completely covered in pictures of hot guys cut out from Tiger Beat and People, and how my parents let me paint my bedroom every couple of years whatever color I wanted...including the furniture--I had a dresser that I painted with my own rainbow-painted footprints.  We loved our rooms.  They really were uniquely ours.  I wanted that for my boys.

So I let go of the dream, it was a stupid dream anyway, and let my kids express themselves. 

I still try to get some kind of coordinating colors in the room (the colors are chosen by the boys, but how they are used is still in my controlling little hands!  buahahahahaha!); I need something like that to satisfy the OCD part of my brain, but that is about as far as I take my mom-influence...for now...I may have to re-exert my influence if one of the boys develops a love of hard rock bands with names like "Dead Kitten" and "Skull and Buttock," or worse, wants to hang up a pin-up girl.  No.

That leads me to the purpose of this post: a bedroom realized that I would NEVER have dreamed of having in my home back in my early days of motherhood.  Too much in one place, too many beds, too many people, too many things, very little coordination!  Last summer the boys got the idea in their heads that one room with four beds would be a hoot.  We pushed them off, saying we'd give it a nice long trial run sometime in the next year, maybe summer when bedtime is a little more flexible than during the school year.  Time passed, but the idea didn't die.  Adam and I even got a little excited about it, so we decided that Spring Break would be a good time to get the room settled.  They had 10 days to get used to it and then only 2 months of school before summer.  It seemed the perfect time.

Zac and Ben have been sharing and quietly whispering late into the night for a couple of years, and they are still performing well in school and have the energy to cope with their busy days.  Josh falls asleep within seconds of his head hitting his pillow.  We were really only worried about Luke who has been doing much better with bedtime, but still has his bad nights.  However, we always still had the other room, just in case he needed a night alone on the floor in a sleeping bag to remind him that bedtime was still bedtime, even with his brothers in the room with him.

Thus, the "bunk room" was born.  Four beds, one room.  Each boy has a little clip light on their bed and the wall space by their bunk is for whatever floats their boat.  The boys are doing great with bedtime.  There are two rules.  One, "lights out" means SLEEP; all whispering and giggling must be completed before "lights out" is called.  And two, each of their beds is a sacred space, intended only for the sleeper of the bed.  No invading that sacred space.

The other room is now the "dressing room," used for four big shelves that house the boys' clothing, also used for select favorite toys and a pile of pillows for snuggling down and reading.  We have some ideas for when Tommy wants to join in the fun, but we are hoping that is still at least a year away.  I am a fan of stretching crib-life (meaning: contained-life) as long as possible.  Everyone has been so happy with the new room situation, and the boys are completely stoked about the bunk room.  I really like things that will bind the boys closer together, and I know this will.  They are physically closer, no doubt, but there is nothing like late night whispering and giggling to bond them closer as friends.