The Littles

A

few weeks ago, my kids started a petition to move into one room all together. With young girls, I tolerate a decent number of shenanigans; even expect it. Overnight, signs began appearing all over my home. Opening the fridge to get something to eat, I saw each apple taped with a sign, “Move us into one room!” On my sneakers, on each individual coffee pod, fastened to every single doorknob, was a little sticky note, misspelled and written with the endearing wobbly hand of a new writer.

My husband was adamant that creating a bunkhouse environment would lengthen bedtime, shorten sleeping hours, and create upheaval in their routines that we honestly just couldn’t handle right now. He was a 100 percent right, and I couldn’t argue with reason. Except, of course, I did. Like an echo, my thoughts circled: Soon they’ll want privacy; soon they’ll be defined by their individuality; soon, they’ll crave space. But now? Now the alliance in sisterhood is their biggest motivation. Whispering past bedtime hours, thinking we don’t hear; little footsteps pattering from one bed to the next; mismatched clothes shared from each other’s closets: aren’t these the sounds that one day we’ll replay, that playlist titled “Nostalgia”?

Of course, my own petition, overflowing with the emotional perspective I have as their mother, followed. Suffice it to say they are all in one room now; and the empty bedroom is now my makeshift home gym. (I didn’t say ulterior motive, did you?)

The upside of all of this is that my kids have begun spending more time playing in their bedroom. The stuffed animals normally relegated to the playroom have — surreptitiously, I might add — begun inching their way to the ends of their beds, and the floating shelves that came with the house are strewn with odds and ends that signify the scatterbrained ingeniousness of young ones at play.