Aug. 6, 2012: Bunk Beds

Rebecca and Marline pose with new bunk beds
(Copyright © 2012 by Wil C. Fry. All rights reserved.)

We bought the bunk bed set pictured above for $329 (including two mattresses) at Mattress & More in Copperas Cove on Wednesday (Aug. 1). It arrived this evening (5:45 p.m.) in the back of a pickup truck and we set it up in about two hours — including a break for supper. Rebecca helped the entire time, clambering over the rails, carrying bolts around and trying them in various holes, and constantly bumping her head or back on something.

Today, for the first time, she began actually saying which part of her body hurts, something I’ve been trying to teach her for months. Since she can name almost all the body parts, and point to them, I was hoping this would come soon. If she bumped her head, she’d touch it and tell me: “heh” (or “bah” for back, etc.) It’s amazing how much this helps both of us. She feels better knowing that she communicated exactly what’s wrong, and I don’t have to guess.

Back to the bunk beds… As shown in the following image, its color very closely matches the dresser that’s been in Rebecca’s room the whole time. Check the part of the bed right behind Rebecca (the near part looks lighter because the flash was brighter there):

This is really hard to do when two pieces of furniture aren’t the same brand, and when one of them was bought at a garage sale more than 10 years ago. So we were happy at how close they are in color/grain.

Rebecca kept squealing with delight as we put the bed together, and then as she played on it later. She had a difficult time getting to sleep at night, mainly because she kept wanting to climb onto the bed and then off again.

Next step: paint the room (Rebecca chose a nice pink color from a sample card at Lowes), which will probably be in a few weeks, depending on budget.

Weather: High of 103°F — our 20th 100-degree day this year, and 10th in a row. Last year by this time we’d had 47 such days and were in the middle of 33 in a row.

Language note: Earlier in the day, Rebecca made the “K” sound for the first time. It’s been one of the weak points in her vocabulary, since you can’t say a bunch of simple C-words without the K sound (car, cat, cow, climb, cut, catch, comb, etc.). She happened to see a commercial for breakfast cereal, where the crazy bird says he’s “coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs”, and started repeating “coo-coo”. Later in the day, when I told her to say it for Mommy, she couldn’t do the K sound anymore, so it was “doo-doo”.