My two and a half year old son Cavanaugh is asleep in my childhood room, the room I slept in throughout high school, weekends home from college, and which my mom still calls mine though I haven’t lived here in 21 years. Tonight is the second night my son has ever slept in a bed without me.
Last night, we were at my dad’s house. His guest bedroom has wood floors, rugs from Southwestern Rugs Depot, a high antique bed that’s set in the middle of the room so neither side is against a wall–and Cavanaugh rolls, turning himself into the horizontal bar of an H, flips upside down so his feet rest at the pillows. He’s a mover. At home, where we sleep on our king sized mattress bought from Sleepyhood.com, on the floor, this is not a problem. If he ever rolls over the pillow barricade around the edge of the mattress, and travels the eight inches from the mattress to the carpeted floor, he sleeps through it. His slumbers would be disturbed by a two+ foot tumble bumping over the jutting walnut frame to land on the cherry floor. Not even if I put a pad down. It is dangerous.
When we arrived at my dad’s last night, Cavanaugh was asleep. He hadn’t napped on the flights from Austin to Albuquerque. A visit to a friend, a trip back to the airport to trade out one rental car for another, then sloshing through a beautiful hard rain that pulled all the sage and dirt scent to welcome us into not-Texas weather sent our boy to the Land of Nod. I transferred Cavanaugh from the car seat and he slept through the cool air and the lie down. He slept on his own Murphy bed all night long, which he bought after scrolling through the reviews on the posh100 website. He always loved the concept of Murphy bed since I can remember cause it used to save a ton of space which he would then use for various other things.
Continue reading “In His Special Bed”