They seem to be coming at me too fast. Geekyboy only just moved to the toddler classroom, gave up his pacifier, and turned two. This weekend he moved from a crib to a big boy bed.
Our kids share a bedroom, Geekygirl sleeps in a converted crib toddler bed that we were given by a neighbour and Geekyboy in a crib, bought with money generously collected by my coworkers and lovingly assembled in anticipation of Geekygirl's arrival all those years ago. I remember so well standing in that room, transformed from office/dumping ground into office/nursery with the crib, rocking chair and hand made dog print curtains, trying and failing to imagine how it would feel to have our baby. How can that be four years ago?
The room has undergone several smaller transformations, once Geekygirl began to crawl we banished the office furniture to a corner of the basement and created a true kids room. Before Geekyboy arrived we moved Geekygirl to her now too small "big girl bed". On Sunday Geekydaddy took the crib and the toddler bed apart, and the room has entered a new stage.
The change was prompted by Geekyboys hair raising crib escape attempts. It was completely spoiling my rare weekend lie ins (until oh, at least 7.30, before you think I have it easy!). We would lie in bed listening to the kids play in the unbalanced manner you can imagine when one is free and one caged like a wild beast. I would jump up for every thump I heard, in fear of finding Geekyboy crumpled on the floor beside the crib, unable to tolerate his sister's freedom any longer. We also needed to replace an ancient armoire that we use for the kids clothes whose door keeps coming off. Several times I have called impatiently to Geekygirl, wondering why she hasn't appeared for breakfast, only to find her holding up the dangling closet door, afraid to move in case it collapsed on top of her. So this weekend we braved IKEA.
Geekydaddy, being Danish, grew up with their sleek, simple Scandanavian-ness, so it is our default for cheap furniture. The Bay Area was blessed with its first IKEA about five years ago. It is conveniently located in Emeryville, a hair raising five lane merge off the first exit after the Bay Bridge. We were so afraid of the crowds that we arrived half an hour before the place opened, so ended up having both breakfast and lunch in the restaurant, probably the prettiest Swedish fast food joint in the world with its view of the bay and both bridges. It was while taking a photo of this view with my phone that I noticed Geekyboy was choking on a meatball. He has a very sweet habit pf patting himself on the back if he starts to choke. Cute at home, but in public I felt like a neglectful, ditsy poorly prioritzed mum, though I did reach him before a concerned fellow parent did.
Still, we managed to come home with two fancy new kids beds, and a new shelf unit to replace the booby trapped armoire. I consider getting in and out of that store and coming home with exactly what we needed, no missing parts or screws, no children crushed in the warehouse and no accidentally broken merchandise to pay for an incredible feat, harder to pull off than almost anything we do at work. OK, so we got lost in the nest of concrete freeways feeding the Bay Bridge on the way home, drifting though a supremely sketchy part of West Oakland down by the docks looking up at the overpasses and thinking "how do we get back up there?", but we finally found our way back to San Francisco. We are a force to be reckoned with!
Taking down the crib was bittersweet. It seems such a short time ago that building the crib beckoned in a new stage in our lives, and now it is gone for good. "Daddy broke my bed" Geekyboy keeps on saying, a little disoriented by the change,
But both kids love the new beds, Geekyboy is especially excited by the independence of getting up in the morning by himself, and Geekygirl is delighted that the bigger bed allows the cats to sleep with her. I don't know what they impregnate those mattresses with, but both kids have slept right through the night every since we put the beds up.
