An interesting week

After 5 days of living on plywood, I'm happy to say we once again have carpet on our second floor. After we were informed our preferred special-order carpet was on back-order and might be ready at the end of the month at the earliest, we took the deal Home Depot was offering and had them install the "wrong" carpet. This color is actually one we had settled on originally, until I found one I liked better and needed a few days to convince Scott. And it looks great - we're very happy with how it has turned out; it seems so plush and clean compared to what we had before! And obviously a big improvement to the plywood...! And now our home is beginning to look like a home again, now that we are no longer dodging large pieces of furniture in our bathrooms (Zach's bathroom at left) and piles of stuff in every corner downstairs. Whew.

To keep things exciting, Zach developed a cold this week, and then an extreme and long-lasting (2+ days!) case of gas. I'll spare you the details, but I could not believe a person that small could create that much and that horrific an odor (a dog yes, a human being - no). There must have been all sorts of stuff working in that little stomach, since he then had his first experience vomiting Thursday night. To keep things interesting, he missed christening our new carpet with puke by less than 2 seconds on Friday. He seemed much better by then, and was upstairs with me checking out the carpet while the installers loaded up outside. I heard an odd sound, so I grabbed him and ran as fast as I could down the stairs; the upstairs bathrooms weren't an option since they were filled with dressers, filing cabinets, and mattresses at that point. While I know our carpet isn't going to remain stain-free for long, I wanted it to last more than 3 minutes! We made it as far as the entrance hallway, outside the bathroom, right as the poor carpet installer walked back in the front door. Sigh. He could not wait to escape this particular job!

^ Zach's room "before"

So it's been an interesting week. I think any child development expert would tell us we were nuts, that we went about making a major change to Zach's routine (introduction to a real bed) in the worst way possible. We put him to bed on a mattress on the plywood floor when the house was in physical upheaval, he had just become potty-trained, and he could barely breathe with his plugged up nose. But, Zach being Zach, he did pretty darn well. I always worry about these types of changes, only to discover whatever it may be is harder on the dog than it is on Zach (you should have seen Koskie following us around nervously as we tore out the carpet, and then pacing around trying to figure out where he should sleep).

^ Zach's room "during"

Don't get me wrong, the transition has certainly not been seamless. The first night he fell out of bed (well, rolled off the mattress) in the middle of the night, but fortunately landed on the rug we had next to the bed. He actually thought it was funny when I went in and he told me what happened. The next night, not so funny, when he somehow rolled off the head of the bed and landed on pure plywood. Never occurred to me that could happen... oops. Fortunately, after we blocked both sides of the mattress, we didn't have any more falling incidents. We just had odd wakings in the middle of the night, and less sleep, both at night and during his nap, than is normal for him. But it's hard to tell if it's the change in bed or the fact that he doesn't feel well - who sleeps well when their nose is stuffed??

As of Friday, he is now sleeping in a real bed - the top bunk of his new bunk bed (don't worry... it's on the ground). We decided to try this first since it has a built-in guard rail; it's amazingly similar to a crib! The first time he woke up (on the mattress) he asked me if he could get out of bed or if he should still call for us when he's ready to get up. I managed to avoid answering, and fortunately he still isn't getting out on his own, which is important right now, since he has not wanted to go to sleep lately. This desire doesn't seem to have anything to do with the bed, it started a few weeks ago when he was still in his crib. Apparently he's just reached the age that he realizes he's missing things when he goes to bed, and he'd much rather stay up and play cars or geotrax. So he has discovered stalling... yippee. A good one was when he called me in the first night because he couldn't tell which car was Lightning and which was the King on his pillowcase in the dark. Usually he just wants to know how long he has to sleep.

^ Zach's room "after" - altho with some bare walls

But my favorite so far was yesterday when Scott put him down for his nap, and sure enough, a few minutes after Scott left the room Zach started yelling for daddy. Scott went back in and Zach reminded him he forgot to put lotion on his hands - something we often do before he goes to sleep; all the hand-washing, thumb-sucking, and cold weather results in chapped hands. Then he said "see Daddy, wasn't it good I screamed for you?"

^ Always comfy in his bed