so, all the cool kids were doing it. call it peer pressure. here i am. actually, i was itching for a way to get some things out on paper. or the computer screen, as it were. as my kids come of age, they'll be journaling in much the same way, i presume.
it's summer time! no school for another 48 days for the children (and 55 for me). yes, i'm counting down. if you aren't, clearly you don't have older children... and/or puberty hasn't hit your home yet. puberty has hit us. HARD. it has chewed us up and spit us out and we haven't even hit the ugly stages of it yet. it has taken my normally angelic children (ahem, cough) and turned them into, well, not so angelic children. and i'm just talking about the eight and ten year old girls right now! enough of the whining, i suppose.
puberty has actually brought us to an issue that i wanted to address, though. we live in a small house. a three bedroom for the 7 of us. the girls share a room and the boys do, too. until now, it hasn't caused an issue. the basement is semi-finished into a playroom for the kids and there is plenty of space for them to play, plus all of the great outdoors, too. the girls, however, are getting the age where sharing space is causing more problems than connections for them. the mister and i have mediated discussions between them, tried to play therapist, had them talk to family members, had them write letters to each other, had them work with each other in the church, even. it's still an issue. they fight dirty. the old adage that boys beat each other up and then are buddies again, but girls hold grudges is definitely true in our home. i've seen it with my own eyes.
we've tried to come up with some solutions to this problem while still having them share a room, since building on to the house is not in the budget at this point. during a recent trip to ikea, i found their TROMSO beds, which are loft beds. i brought the idea up to the mister about un-bunking the girls' beds and either making loft beds or purchasing the TROMSO beds from ikea for them. i would then hang a curtain from the underside of each loft bed, effectively making that area each girl's "room." we'd make them a new desk (currently, they share a double desk), and i want to buy each one a beanbag chair because they remind me of my childhood and i was never allowed to have one when i was a kid. also, because the 10 year old is a huge reader, she definitely needs a wall lamp in her "room," thus making another trip to ikea necessary. ;) if you stick with the blog, you'll realize my deep love for all things ikea very shortly.
i think my plan will work. i just need to figure out a way to do it on a budget and if i can find some easy to re-purpose pieces from the thrift store, that would be even better. as much as i love my little wild monkeys, they do drive me crazy when they are fussing and fighting, but if this will help them get along better, i'll do what i can!
