Our boys’ room is getting a make-over. This has been a plan of ours for a long time, and now it’s finally happening. The boys are excited! And so am I. Because the new boys’ room will be very cool. New beds are being built — yes, BUILT. What we are doing will look something like this:
So right now their room has no furniture in it, nothing on the walls, and their previous bed frames have been dismantled and disposed of, and all that is in that room is three mattresses that are in a line on the floor. Just mattresses on the floor, and nothing else. Well, except dirty clothes and towels.
So in a room void of anything but mattresses on the floor, you can imagine the temptation my boys have right now. How can three boys, ages 13, 10, and 7, resist the urge to jump on mattresses in a room like that? It can’t be done. They will jump.
And for the most part, I don’t even care. Let them jump. They aren’t going to get hurt. Unless they start doing flips or something. And I’m sure at one point they’ll attempt that, but so far they haven’t. At least I don’t think so. I don’t care that they jump on their mattresses. The only exception to this is when it’s a school night and they need their sleep. That’s when I don’t want any jumping. I just want them in bed.
The other night, which was school night, after getting everyone tucked in and down for the night (which is no small feat, let me tell you) I was downstairs trying to relax on the couch. And I say “trying to relax” because guess what? That’s right. As soon as I sat down and put my feet up, right above my head I could hear the sound of my boys laughing and jumping on their mattresses.
Ooooh, that made this mama so mad! Because I had already told them three times “lights out, no talking” and three times should be enough. It was only when everything was finally quiet and settled down that I came downstairs for some mama-needs-some-me-time. So the boys were quiet, they were in bed for the night … and they waited until I was downstairs to start the jumping. Ughhh! When they jump, they get loud. When they get loud, they can wake up the rest of the kids. And if that happens, then I have to do the whole bedtime routine all over again. So like I said, Oooooh this mama was mad!
Now, I could have shouted from where I was. I could have shouted KNOCK IT OFF AND GET TO SLEEP!!! and they would have heard me because with ten kids I have had plenty of time to work on my shouting voice. But the thing is, if I did that I would risk waking up the baby and the other kids who would have also heard my killer shouting voice. So I didn’t want to shout. But yet I didn’t want to get up.
So I waited. I sat there and waited. Maybe they would just do a few jumps and then get tired and go to sleep? Well, after about five minutes I could tell that wasn’t going to be the case. They would just keep going and going and going. And so I sat there getting angrier by the second. I didn’t want to get up! I was done for the day! Darn those boys and their never ending energy!
I got up off the couch and quietly walked upstairs. I was going to make sure they did not get any kind of warning from me. I wanted to fling that door open and scare the crap out of them with my big, booming angry mama voice. I wanted them to quake and quiver from my wrath. They got me up during my quiet time, so oh heck yea they were going to hear it from me.
And so I paused at their door, which was cracked just a little bit so that I could see inside, and like a tiger watching her prey, I was about ready to pounce…. but then I saw my 13 year old, my 10 year old, and my 7 year old laughing and jumping and bouncing into each other, and piling onto each other, and hitting each other with their pillows. Laughing. And I just stood there and watched. I watched them enjoying each other’s company and thought to myself, one day these boys will be 40, 37, and 34 years old. They will be living in different homes with different families of their own. But right now … look at them having brotherly fun together in the room that they share. How special is this? These moments are the special moments of childhood. Of brothers. So no way was I was going to go in there and yell at them. My angry mama heart was changed in an instant.
I watched for a few more seconds, and then I opened up the door and immediately all three of them fell into their beds and pulled the covers up over their heads. Uh oh, mom is here!
I didn’t say a word. Instead, I got up onto one of the mattresses and started jumping. And they peeked out from their covers and saw their mom jumping on the bed and huge smiles spread across their faces. They sprang up out of their beds and quickly joined me. And we spent about five minutes jumping from mattress to mattress, and laughing.
You know, it felt pretty darn good to do that! No wonder kids can’t resist.
I did not have a camera with me at that time, but I found this cartoon that paints the scene quite accurately. Well, except there were three boys instead of two, and none of my boys has blue hair. And we didn’t pile the mattresses on top of each other. Okay, so this cartoon doesn’t look quite like the scene after all, but you get the idea. The smiles are the same, at least!
