Moving day

The mathematics of our house don't quite add up: three bedrooms, three kids. Add a couple of parents in there and something's gotta eventually give. Yesterday, it did.

Our two youngest have been sharing a bedroom since Little Man first joined the world just over five years ago. When Dahlia was three, the logistics were fairly simple. Now that she's in the third grade and has a social life whose complexity matches the schematic of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, the appeal of cohabitating with a younger brother wears off pretty quickly.

So we gave eldest son, Zach, what he's always wanted: his own room in the palatial basement suite. Noah moved into Zach's now-old room, and Dahlia got to call her room her own.

Of course, rooms don't move themselves. Mom and Dad do. Which is where the trouble begins. See, we're not all that handy. A teacher and a journalist can certainly educate and inspire. But hauling furniture down two flights of stairs really isn't our forte.

Which explains why we eventually found ourselves hot, sweaty (come on, stop it!) and cursing at the bottom of the basement stairs, standing on opposite sides of a bed platform that had become solidly wedged in the stairwell and simply refused to make the final turn into the room.

It is true we've hated the bed since we bought it oh so many years ago. We swore then as we swear now that we'd never again buy furniture from a mass market furniture store where the commissioned salespeople in really bad sportcoats practically beat each other up as they assault you upon your entry to the establishment.

Which made the final decision an easy one: we had to take the darn thing apart. With a hammer. And not a whole lot of - okay, NO - expertise.

It worked. More or less. We freed the bed. Sort of put the pieces back together in Zach's new room (don't worry, I saved the suddenly-leftover strips of "wood".) Moved Noah into his new room - his bed, purchased just last year, is made of actual wood, and comes apart rather easily, with actual lag bolts and not staples. Moved Dahlia's furniture around her room because we didn't want her to feel left out.

We spent extra time at bedtime with each munchkin, helping them all settle into their suddenly-new-to-them surroundings. Little Man seemed so much smaller as he climbed up the step stool into his bed. My wife and I took turns lying with him while he babbled on and on about how much he couldn't wait to play on his new floor. He finally fell asleep with his arm draped around my shoulder, his little face parked next to the mural of a road that Debbie had painted so many years before when we first moved into a new house in a strange city.

Zach at first wasn't sure about the strangeness of being in the basement, but he relaxed when he realized his room was bigger than those of his siblings. Dahlia simply enjoyed the relative silence and the gift of being able to listen to whatever bedtime music she wished. When morning comes, she informed us, she plans on doing some gymnastics on her suddenly-larger floor.

As for the parents who made it all happen, we feel as if we've gone a few rounds. My wife sleeps soundly beside me while I magically avoid sleep with my laptop. My toe, swollen and bleeding after I dropped the bed on it, reminds me why I drive a pen for a living. And a quiet and dark house - complete with a few more scrapes in its walls - marks another milestone in the lives of the constantly changing people who live here.