Some Crib Mattresses Make Better Trampolines

As much as I try to stick to daytime working hours the days all 3 kids are in their summer program, nighttime work is inevitable many nights of the week. Kendall and Leyna take turns poking their heads in the office.

“Mom? Mom. Mom, mom, mom. Mom. Will you snuggle me?”

Ugh. Yes, of course I want to tuck them in, and I want to curl up and snuggle, and I want to watch Jimmy Fallon as they doze off to sleep.

But I have to work. This work-at-home-mom thing is weird and difficult in some ways. Boundaries are never very clear.

Mostly because I refuse to draw them with heavy, black lines. I have the freedom to let them be murky, like watercolors. And so they are.

“Give me 15 minutes, Kendall,” I said last night.

He sprawled out on the empty office carpet. We have not furnished this room for many reasons, but that’s worked out to the kids’ advantage, it seems. There is plenty of room to play in here.

Moments later, as I typed out an email, I heard the quick thump, thump, thump of a basketball on hardwood floors.

“Mom, mom, mom, mom,” he repeated to the beat of  the ball hitting the ground until I finally turned around and acknowledged his dribbling skills.

Recently, I dragged the old crib mattress in here. Not because I thought it would make a great trampoline for the kids, but because I thought our 11 year old dog Callie might like to rest on it during the day.

Of course, the dog hates it, and the children jump on it.

Colgate Kids sent Lowell a Nuzzle Snuze GreenGuard certified mattress, which seems much better as a thing for babies to sleep on (non-toxic, recyclable, allows air to flow freely).

So now the old mattress can live it up as tiny trampoline in my office late at night.

Ugly and plasticky as it is, literally falling apart at the seams, I think I need to keep it around in here… until we find something suitable, like, I don’t know, some kind of grown up couch or something. I much prefer it in this new use. Lowell seems to, too.