King size goodness

Never again will I use a nightstand for a pillow.
I know you’re probably thinking that there are plenty of softer items to throw on the bed than a nightstand. And you are correct. But I have not dragged a nightstand into bed. Rather, I am free from my recent torment of waking up, my body on the very edge of the bed, my head resting on my nightstand, one hand gripping the nightstand, the other planted on the ground to keep me from falling out of bed.
Needless to say, this was not the most comfortable way of sleeping.
But now, I have a new bed, and I am free from the terror. My wife and I have abandoned our queen size bed and replaced it with a king size, which is roughly an acre.
A queen size bed used to be plenty big. And then children came along. Combine mobile kids with fairly heavy sleeping parents, and you have a recipe for a bed chock full of Gibbons. On nights when the little rascals sneak into the room, I rarely notice it. In fact, they could drive an SUV onto our bed and I would not notice it.
So what happens is they sneak into bed and nestle themselves firmly in the middle. Then, over the course of sleeping, the begin their expansionism. And for those of you without children, I can say that the single most powerful force in the universe is a sleeping 3-year-old’s legs. (The only thing that can even come close is the leg power of a sleeping Basset hound.) Somehow, Parker has the ability to stretch out and gradually move me or my wife out of the way, taking over about 60 percent of the available bed space. By the morning, I have reached the edge and am hanging on for support, my head resting on the nightstand.
Now I know the first thing you are thinking is that we should not let our kids in our bed. And I assure you we do not. I am fairly convinced they have the ability to dematerialize and reform in our room. Most every night, I vividly recall putting both of them to sleep in their own rooms. And then – poof! – there they are in the morning. So anyone who is critical of the kids finishing up their deep sleep in our room is MORE than welcome to come over and play kid goalie from midnight to 7 a.m.
Additionally, I am fairly certain that the kids will grow out of this. Allie doesn’t come in very often, and when she does it’s when she’s had a bad dream. (Apparently, “The Shining” is a poor choice for a bedtime story.) Parker will also grow out of it, but he’s three right now, so his general outlook on life is: “What Parker wants, Parker gets. And Parker wants to sleep in there.” For the record, we do not adhere to Parker’s life outlook. But we pick our battles. For example: While Parker DOES get to pick out his shirt on occasion, Parker DOES NOT get to pick out Mommy’s shirt. And he certainly doesn’t get to pick it out for himself.
So when the king size bed arrived, I was amazed at how much bigger it seemed. It’s only 18 inches wider, but it just seems gobs bigger than our old mattress. After it was put in the room, my wife looked at it and said, “It kinda takes up the whole room...”
“Well,” I said, “it is called a BEDroom.”
My wife just stared at me, not sure whether I thought I was being funny or was the master of the obvious. She does that a lot.
So the first night of the big new bed, we were amazed at how much more room there was. (We brought cell phones so we could say goodnight.) When the alarm went off in the morning, I awoke and was amazed to find myself firmly and solidly on nothing but bed. No nightstand. No floor support. Just...mattress. Hmm. Guess the kids stayed in their room. I got up to turned off the alarm and turned back to see that, there in the bed, were two twisted contorting little ones, both taking up their own little quadrants of Bedland. Outstanding.
So while the issue of little ones sneaking into the room is less of a pressing one to resolve, I am at least glad that my wife and I can get a good night’s sleep if they do sneak in. And like I said, they will grow out of this as they get older. They have to. We don’t have room for a bigger bed.