bedrooms part next: Bug on board

For eight years the boys shared a bedroom and had a room to leave messy as a playroom. I always assumed we'd need to change this at some point, but wasn't sure when.

Pook had gone to bed an hour post-Bug for a year without conflict, but several factors made it seem like it was the right time to make a change. Bug, as crabby in the mornings as a crab with a claw caught in a trap, needed to be alone. Middle school starts for Pook this fall/next month and with it comes a change to a later schedule. Someday he will hit puberty, learn to sleep in, want privacy and enjoy having a place to get away. Now seemed like a good time.

Only they were reluctant to get it. Pook, while getting the brunt of the crabbiness, didn't really want to move out. Sweetly, he told me he "sort of likes to hear Bug snore." Bug said he was unsure he wanted change. Pook didn't need to say it. Neither wanted us to get rid of the Bouncy Bed. No one could decide how toys (read: "lego") would be split.

I put the Bouncy Bed up against a wall to see if anyone asked me to lay it flat again. A month went by and no one cared. I began to talk up the change and the New Stuff required to make two rooms. Bug got on board. We had an incident involving a stomach bug and the need for carpet cleaning. While the furniture, including the bouncy bed, were displaced, I decided That was It. Out went the huge and in-the-way mattress. Someone picked it up from the curb within hours.

Hoping to get Pook excited, CD and I assembled the double bed frame we'd had in storage (my father's from childhood) and a double bed mattress was purchased. We agonized over sheet purchasing. He finally found some with navy blue and tiny red stars on white that "were fine." Still not into the whole thing. He began to sleep in his new room. It was "a bit lonely."

Meanwhile Bug was picking out paint colors. His room has the chair rail, so he decided he wanted blue under it and yellow above. I convinced him to go lighter than he first wanted; his side of the house is very dark. Finally a clear but deep sky blue and a butter yellow were chosen. The schedule was consulted. Vacations and other plans necessitated a wait until July.  July came.

next up: photos before and after