When something so ‘insignificant’ causes war in the house

My husband and I have been waiting about three weeks for our new bed to arrive, cause we’re getting old now and our bodies can’t compensate for a sloppy old mattress anymore. We found a factory reject queen size in a gorgeous non-spring mattress that can handle my husband’s 100kg frame (he’s an ox, I know).

The bed arrived yesterday with great fanfare, I was running around the yard trying to get the hysterical dogs in the garage, because trucks and delivery men are their favourite snack. My kids on the other hand where being super helpful by riding their push bikes at full tilt into the gate and screaming at the top of their lungs whilst doing so.

It was such a peaceful experience.

The plan was our old bed goes into my eldest son’s room (cause it’s hand made by grandpa and you can’t replace that kind of thing), and our old mattress was going to be donated to some lucky soul. The plan was well thought out. From the time of bed delivery, now standing upright in my bedroom, to when dad gets home, the kids have made a slide with the old mattress in my room and have piled every pillow they can find in the house on top of it and it’s become their personal trampoine/jumping pile.

For 45 minutes.

Non-stop.

Enter mom, to put an end to the fun and serve supper.

Tantrum no 1.

So mom comes back with “if you don’t eat your supper now no T.V.” – haha!

Tantrum no 2.

So I walk away, take a deep breath and return. Remembering that the younger one has missed his nap, the older one has been home all day from school with a cough and today is the first day out of FOUR that the sun is shining and the kids got to play OUTSIDE for the first time, in the mud I add, and now they are COMPLETELY off their heads and over-tired.

I know what you’re thinking, mom wins! Nope, not even close. Mom does not win, in fact, not even Dad could win. My eldest threw a fit when Dad arrived home and refused to have the “new bed” in his room. He was throwing himself on things and flailing his arms around, smacking at us and crying. Shouting at the top of his lungs and going all red in the face.

We ended up having to cart one mattress into the lounge for a trampoline, the eldest was still screaming about his new bed being ugly and he didn’t want it, the younger was literally bouncing off the walls and refused point blank to eat anything.

Are you keeping count? That’s an hour and a half so far, four tantrums in.

In the end, I managed to negotiate that the eldest sleeps in the bed and dad will move them around in the morning. I also managed to negotiate a peanut butter sambo for supper if I sat with him on the couch and watched Turbo. The little one was hauled into the car for KFC Pops and a nap drive to get him to sleep.

So in the end the older one fell asleep on my lap, the younger one fell asleep in the car and we were all in bed by 20h00. So I imagine that is a win in the end, but I’ll tell you it didn’t feel like a win before or during all that screaming, I had a large glass of wine cause hubby forgot to buy my ice-cream on the take out run, but at least my new bed is like sleeping on a floofy cloud.

So today we re-arrange everything again, lets hope my son approves.

Kim van Vee is a wife, mom to two boys, living and loving life in Jeffreys Bay, business owner and creative weirdo.
She loves big cups of coffee (and tea), fancy pastries and knitwear.

You can find Kim over at Kimvanveeblog

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