A Tale of Two Beds

I wrote the other day about The Great Bed Debate, but it sounded silly so I deleted it. Here's round two.

When we received our referral, and knew this was the Real Deal, I looked on kijiji for toddler beds and found a home made, wooden bed for $20. It was sweet and a great price. I bought a mattress for it and a pair of sheets so the girls' beds would match. We were excited to put it in the room all set up, but beside the fire truck bed Paxten sleeps in, the cuteness of the new bed transformed into Noun For Pathetic.

I worried about it, but wasn't sure how to solve the problem. We couldn't afford to buy another bed like Tink's - that one was given to us by my colleague but is several hundred dollars to buy new. I briefly considered selling the fire truck to buy two smaller (read less expensive) matching beds, but was not comfortable with taking Paxten's bed away from her at this point. Besides, we're planning on buying bunk beds for their room when we consider them "safe" to be unsupervised in one (which may be never if Paxten continues to be as fearless as she is... though Elliot does alright, he has survived a few falls from the top... I digress). So I put it aside as something not worth worrying about and decided the beds were fine.

Then my parents arrived Tuesday night, and read the kids stories at bedtime. Mom came down from reading to PJ and said, "Annie can't have that bed - it's NOTHING next to the firetruck" voicing my old concerns exactly. I defended our choice, voiced my arguments, but that ol' parent guilt was already planted and I couldn't shake it.

I searched kijiji for "toddler bed" again and the second ad was for a fire truck bed! I wrote them a note asking if it was still available, leaving my phone number. They wrote me back this morning that it still was. Since my mother planted the seed of guilt, she offered to buy it. Well, that wasn't her reason for buying it, but it was my reason for accepting - since we don't have the money to do so ourself. Now the bed is in pieces in our upstairs hall and I'm sooo excited to set it up in the girls' room.

N