Eli's New Bed

Yesterday was an epochal day in the history of our family. Eli got a new bed. It is a “Cherry Madison” toddler bed just like Julia’s (a likeness Julia softened by insisting excitedly that the “wooden part is exactly the same!” while, for all the rest, her own dear bed will remain forever unique). Although we have put together Julia’s bed twice, we still had a hard of assembling Eli’s (the instructions were clear enough, but the execution of them proved sticky). I had Lia help me, not so much for the help itself, but because her presence in such projects is a salutary influence that helps prevent me from cursing out loud.

We finally finished the bed, just before Lia had to go to a prenatal checkup (the always exciting glucose test). I did some rearranging of the room on my own and set up the two toddler beds in parallel positions in the two far corners of the room. The girls were both very excited about this new arrangement and very excited about Eli’s new bed.

Eli was perhaps too excited, and threw a mighty resistance at nap time. Actually she just babbled on incessantly in her excitement, in direct defiance of my repeated remonstrations and mounting threats. When I had to go into the room to urge Eli’s silence for the sixth time—by then Julia had long since fallen asleep—I removed her from her bed, put her mattress back in the old crib, and then put Eli into the crib with it. This devastating blow worked the results desired, and Eli contritely begged to be put back into her bed. I consented and, with one more loud declamation from the defiant child—and a stern warning from me about returning to the crib once more—she finally fell asleep.

The next morning Eli woke up—for the third day in a row—at about 6:20, or in other words, just a couple minutes after I had hunkered down for a serious scripture study. I went to her, explained lovingly that it was still “sleepy time,” refilled her sippy-cup, and gave her a gentle hug while, to all appearances, she closed her eyes and went back to sleep. This was a histrionic show on her part, and I knew it. Not for three minutes had I returned to my scriptures before I heard Eli chattering anew, loud and garrulous. I went to the girls’ room again and saw to my amusement that, not only was she haranguing the universe in general, but she was standing directly over her big sister’s head and crying unintelligibilities into her big sister’s ear. Funny as this was, I had to intervene, and saved the sleeping Julia by ushering the obnoxious Eli into the living room for a stimulating reading of “Disney Princess Rhyme Time.” I thus sacrificed a legion of brain cells on the altar of my firstborn’s—as well as my wife’s—beauty sleep. I confidently expect such self-effacing heroism to be remembered in the Valley of Jehoshaphat.