Evidently little things mean alot

There are 3 bedrooms in this house besides the master bedroom. James and Steven occupied the largest of these when FireFaerie and I got here. Steph was moving back in and we put the two girls in the smallest room that used to be Steph’s alone. The middle room was reserved for guests. Once summer was over and the guests weren’t coming any more, we gave the girls the middle room and made the small room a guest/computer room. Then we had to ask James to leave (ok, I didn’t ask, I told! lol – with Dennis’ blessing of course) and Steven was alone in the biggest room.

Along comes Steven and Stephanie’s bio-mom so Steven got the middle room, FireFaerie got the small room and Steph and her mom got the big room. Bio-mom moves out (on her own, thankfully I didn’t have to ask her to leave!!) and Steph wants her old room back and asks Fire to switch with her. And that’s the way it stayed for a couple of years.

Steph moved back to Louisiana and the little room becomes a guest/computer room again. FireFaerie goes off to college but retains her room. Steven goes off to Job Corps in Kentucky but retains his room, with the exception that we gut his room, paint it and use it as a guest room and the little room becomes a storage room.

Steven comes back from Job Corps and moves back into the middle room and I overhear him make a comment to someone that ‘some old lady lives in his room’ which I take to mean he doesn’t like the decor any more! lol. Since Fire only uses her room to store her stuff at this point and uses the guest room when she and her honey show up, I ask if she minds me boxing up her stuff and setting the room up for Steven and he moves back into his old room. And proceeds to basically use it only to store his stuff, only rarely spending the night in it.

Through all these years, despite all the bedrooms we have, there was never enough room for the boys to have their own room here. We have had to fit them in where we could, bunking them in the guest room with a double bed, and if that’s occupied they get relegated to the floor in Steven’s room. One year I was working 5 nights a week so they just slept in our bed with Dennis and on our floor the nights I was home. (Talk about putting a crimp in our love life! LOL!)

This year though, they are too old to be stuck together in a double bed and with Steven rarely here anyway, I told him we were giving the room over to the boys, and we had told the boys this also. However we couldn’t get it done before they got here and once again, for two nights, they were stuck in the guest room.

But Monday I emptied the room and Dennis shampooed the carpet and I tea-stained the bleach spots, then Dennis charcoaled the tea-stained bleach spot and re-shampooed the normally beige carpet and I’ll be damned if it didn’t come out looking half decent! Who’d’ve thunk it! LOL!

Finally, last night the carpet was clean and dry and we dug out the second single bed and set them both up, asked the boys how they wanted them arranged in the room, where they wanted the two shelves so they each got one and had them pick out which sheets they wanted. Alex picked the baseball sheets and Louis picked Fire’s old leopard print sheets we bought for her college room. I searched the house until I found the two bedspreads that James and Steven used at their age – which was way cool according to the boys and way money saving to us! LOL! And voila! We have a decent boys room all their own with their own beds and their own toys and their own clothes in it. They were excited to put their own pillows on their own beds (gifts from Grammy Ann 7 years ago which they are still attached to!), Louis put his shoes under his bed and Alex put his hockey stick under his! Hey, whatever! LOL!

But there actually was an immediate and noticeable change in them. Suddenly they wanted to play outside and were running around instead of planted in front of the TV and they weren’t fighting or complaining so much. They ate their whole dinner and asked for seconds and actually conversed with us! The beds are both single beds with wooden headboards, but different in style and they each claimed their own and I had told them that these are their "forever beds". We may move but the beds come with us and will always be theirs when they stay with us. This must have meant something to them because they both asked me at least once during the evening if the beds really were ‘theirs’. I guess little things do mean alot and I am glad we were finally able to give them their own space here so they can feel like they belong and are not just visiting guests.