I Want My Snips and Snails, and Puppy Dog Tails!

I guess I knew it would happen eventually. 

You see, we live in a fairly small house.  Two bedroom, one bath.  In our neck of the woods, though, the average home costs $215,000.  Yes, that is the average home price.  Our area is a retirement mecca, and people bring their dentures, their RV’s and their filthy lucre here and park them after their working era is over, therefore raising our property values out the roof.  So…normal families like us (hee, that was fun just saying) can only afford to live in oversized cardboard boxes.

Anyway.  My guys love our house.  They think it is cozy, and they have often remarked how they would hate to live in some big mansion where you had to go looking for your mom when you needed her.  (Ahh.)  They have always shared a room and enjoyed whispering and sharing secrets late into the night when mom and dad were blissfully unaware (aka: too exhausted to tell them to shut up one more time).  In fact, I don’t think I can ever remember them having a fight over whose side of the room was whose, or how their brother was invading their personal space.

But lately, things have changed.  And like I said, I guess I knew it would happen eventually.  Besides the fact that they are growing so fast that their room has gotten miniscule lately, 12 and 14 year old boys also just seem to need their privacy.  Uber is Mr. Modest and won’t change clothes with anyone in the room. H-T has a strong need to shut his door and have some personal time.  And the whispering at night has begun to contain more “shut up and let me go to sleep” statements than shared jokes and giggles. 

So when two boys need their space, and there are only two bedrooms in a house….what do you do?  First, we considered the attic.  It is actually already partially finished out up there, and I have used it for an office on and off.  But I am 5’6″, and Uber is hard approaching 5’10”, with H-T right at his heels.  Unless I expect them to develop hunchbacks or roll around in wheelchairs up there, it isn’t much of an option.

The only other option?  The dining room.  It is definitely the least used room in the house. Our formal hutch and dining room table have been used less and less for entertaining over the years, and more and more as parking places for various piles of homeschool paraphernalia. Actually eating in there usually requires a great deal of preparation and a backhoe.  As much as I hated to think about getting rid of our beautiful dining room furniture which was handed down to us from R-T’s grandmother, I knew that this was our most sensible alternative.

So…this past week, we had workers in to put doors on the dining room, take down the lighting fixture, put up a ceiling fan, and revamp the area where we will be eating instead.  God knows I hate painting, but that is next on the list, unless H-T wants his dreams to be filled with magenta colored nightmares. 

It is so hard for him to be patient through this process.  Once the possibility of his own room really got into his head, it simply couldn’t come fast enough.  In fact, as soon as the doors were in place in the dining room, he began shutting himself in there, daydreaming for hours about what it would be like to have a space to call his own.

All part of the march toward stupid independence, I guess.  Where are the days when I would plop down on their floor  at night and read aloud to them from endless adventures?  The endless nightly rituals of bedbugs biting, and checking on the dreamcatcher to make sure it was still in working order?  Going in for the umpteenth time to run one or the other out of their brother’s bed and back into their own so they could finally settle down for the night.  Turning on their light in the morning and singing my “Good Morning” song and seeing their catatonic faces come to beautiful life. 

In my opinion, this growing up business is crap.  I want my little boys back! 

(not to mention my dining room…)