Tag Archives: houlenbabies

Big Kids’ Beds

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday, the kids’ new beds were delivered. Robyn and I have been talking about moving them up to bigger, more comfortable beds but we have been putting it off due to the size of their room. We mulled over getting bunk beds (too high) and captain beds with storage drawers underneath (too pricey) and every layout variation (not that there are a lot of options for the size of their room!) we could think of. Since I got a nice bonus this year and we got our good tax refund we decided that this was the time to make the move.

Finally, we serendipitously found a great solution in a newspaper ad – box spring mattresses with drawers built in! They were not much more expensive than standard box springs and they are normal size so we don’t have to deal with them taking up more room than they need to. Of course, Robyn found a great deal and we bought them and all the necessary items to go along with them. We paid for the delivery and set up and everything went quite smoothly – even getting their old convertible cribs into the attic for storage:

crib in attic

How to store a crib in the attic

We were able to Freecycle a ton of stuff and throw a lot of other old toys and puzzles away to make room and tidy up before the delivery. It took all of about 15 minutes for the guys to set up the bed frames, bring up the mattresses and box springs, stack them on top of each other, dispose of the plastic and shipping stuff and head out. Well worth the delivery fee and $20 tip (I can’t let those guys leave empty handed…maybe I should have asked if they needed an some old toys or cribs?). Robyn set about prettying things up with sheets, pillows and comforters and we were finished by about 3pm!

new beds

Big Kids' Room

The kids’ first night didn’t go as well as we might have hoped. They were so excited about the beds and screwed up by changing sides of the room and the whole new situation that they had a hard time falling asleep. When I got home from running a few errands (Chili’s for mom and dad!) around 9:30, Robyn told me that the boy had just fallen asleep! Yikes!

Sidenote: Apparently, I am unable to eat an entire Chili’s hamburger with fries anymore. I was so stuffed after that meal that I was uncomfortable and then woke up this morning with heartburn, which I never have! I think I’ll have to cut those things in half next time!

Tonight was not much better. We had an early Spring snowstorm today that left us with a few inches of snow and about an inch of hale around dinner time. On top of that, we saw a few flashes of lightning and heard some thunder as the kids were going to bed. I sat with them for a while and Chloe drifted off. Gabriel, however, gave us a hard time. We tried to be sensitive but firm and he finally went to sleep around 9pm.

Another milestone down!

kids in bed

Ready for their first night in big kids' beds

Goodbye Discovery

Posted on by
Reply

The kids and I took a few minutes out during the bedtime ritual the other night to gaze up and watch the Space Shuttle Discovery’s last visible flyover of our area. It was followed about two minutes (and about 500 miles!) later by the ISS. This is the second time that Chloe and Gabriel saw the ISS – the first time was the night of their 4th birthday party. They seemed to be a bit more interested tonight – probably because they understand a little bit about planets and space (thanks to Chloe’s new favorite TV show called “Bubble Guppies”). After the flyover we spent about 30 minutes looking at photos of the shuttle and space station. Their excitement and amazement when I told them there were astronauts who were sleeping and eating and working up there was so obvious and they wanted to know more.

The next afternoon I watched STS-133 come to an end as Discovery landed safely at Kennedy Space Center for the last time.

Space Shuttle Discovery touches down for the last time on March 9, 2011

The moment was bittersweet for me because it seemed just as my children were old enough to show an interest in manned space exploration we in the US are on the verge of cutting our manned programs to a minimum due to a lack of clear direction.

I am not one of those people who ask “why are we spending billions on space exploration when we have so many problems here in our own country?” but I can understand why some have that opinion – they think that manned space exploration has no tangible benefit to our lives here on Earth. They don’t realize that without the past programs they wouldn’t have their GPS, home water filters, laptop and cell phone batteries and a lot of other things that we now take for granted. If space exploration doesn’t get the kind of attention is deserves, I think a lot of kids who would have been motivated to study science won’t take it up and that’s only going to push our country further back in the pack of nations who do have active space programs.

NASA will continue to make advances and there is a lot of potential in the private companies who are taking up the challenges of getting people and cargo into orbit and eventually to the Moon but it’s very sad to me that we don’t have a clear path for the continuation of manned space exploration.