Bed switching

Yesterday we went "shopping" for furniture in Grandma Pat's basement—and high time, too! We were supposed to go last week over and over again but Andrew was still so busy with his dissertation that we kept putting it off. And then we were supposed to go on Monday but had to postpone until yesterday due to extenuating family circumstances. Yesterday might not have been the very best day to go; it certainly ended up being more complicated than we had originally planned, but it was also quite fun. Uncle Rod showed up to help move furniture and Aunt Nicki was there as well and because we showed up a little late (okay, by more than an hour) Grandma Pat ordered pizza so we could fill our bellies and avoid the worst of rush hour traffic.

We had a fun little visit, even though Grandma Pat's house is a little like a museum, full of interesting-to-look-at things that are verboten to little fingers (making it somewhat of a trial for the smallest of us (only Benjamin and Zoë came with us; Rachel and Miriam spent the afternoon/evening with Naanii and Bumpa at the movies/dinner). I think the only person to knock anything over, however, was Andrew, so...


We ended up with a couch—Aunt Nicki's couch that we took from her house when we first got married, that then went into Grandma Pat's house when we moved to Egypt, and is now back at our house—a couple of chairs, a bookshelf, a dresser, a lamp, and an end table. We also picked up a dresser from Uncle Jacob. So now we're all furnitured up. We have a dresser in every room (though still not for every person in our family, but I have to admit, cramming clothes for seven into four dressers sounds much better than cramming clothes for six into two dressers).

Side note: Heiss family, party of seven. How in the world?! I mean, I understand the biology of it but, like, time...what?

Oh, we also picked up a bed for Benjamin. He was so excited to get to sleep on it but we got home right at bedtime and so put him, rather unwillingly, to bed on the air mattress he's been using (because life, if anything, is terribly unfair and sometimes you get a new bed but still can't use it right away).

My mom will be happy to hear that it's the kind of bed where you put the frame down and pile the mattresses on top. No assembly required. But we had to dig around to find sheets and so forth, which was the hold up at bedtime.

After the kids were in bed, Andrew and I had to shuffle things around so we could get anywhere upstairs, which meant we had to move that bed. So we slid Benjamin's air mattress to the middle of the room, dragged the bed in there, made it up, and transferred him over. He's a heavy sleeper.

When he came into my room this morning he was rather confused.

"Mom, did you..." he stammered. "I don't know how but... Mom, I think I...slept...in...my...new...bed... Somehow...

"What?!" I said. "We told you that you couldn't!"

"But I just woke up on it!" he said.

"Benjamin, that's crazy," I said (gas-lighting (or bed-switching) him a little, I admit). "No one goes to sleep on one bed and wakes up on a completely different one."

"But I did!" he said. "I don't know what happened. But the new bed is in my room and I was sleeping on it!"

I eventually did tell him that Mom and Dad had moved him over in the middle of the night, but it was fun to lead him on for a while. Hey, sometimes it feels like there aren't many perks to parenthood (why didn't anyone tell me it would be this much work?). You have to take/make the fun times when you can grab them...