Upended

That sounds like a good working title for my autobiography… at any rate, today it was literally the case. One of the consequences of seeking a foster care license is that there are innumerable rules and regulations that begin to apply to licensed foster care providers, which do not apply to cases of kinship placement, as we are at the moment.  This has meant that, as our licensing inspection grew closer, we were under more and more pressure to bring our sleeping arrangements into compliance with the state regs. After wracking our brains for some weeks to figure out a solution, we suddenly saw the light, and today, implemented a perfect plan by completely switching our bedroom with the one the boys were in.  It was an all day affair, and there was much, much labor on the part of the older kids, as they did all the room clearing, took apart the bunk beds, moved things to the new rooms and put the bunk back together, doing most of it without Paul even being on the premises, as he had responsibilities to care for elsewhere.  They did stellar work, and I’m so proud of them all!  And after all was said and done, and the little boys (who had napped through the greatest pat of the changeover this afternoon) had a chance to jump on the new beds this evening, Junior came into my bedroom, looked at me earnestly, and said, “Thank you for my new bedwoom!” — and ran back to play.  So adorable!!

Although our new room is smaller, I had the idea to put the head of the bed inside the closet, thereby gaining a couple of feet of floor space and making the whole things feasible.  I was surprised to find some Junior artwork on the wall of the closet when everything had been moved out… how wrong I was to think that toddler wall-art was a thing of my past!  Fortunately the girls were able to scrub it clean.

Riddler Green is not the color I would have opted for (remember that was what Jacob chose for his new room when we first moved back into the house after the fire), but I can work with it for the moment. Laurent and Megan wanted so to touch up all the nicks in the walls that had resulted from bunk building and un-building, so they went out to the shed and found some of the old paint that has been sitting there since 2011. Upon opening, they thought it still seemed viable, so they had at it and painted over all the white marks.  Unfortunately, I think age had darkened the paint because now my walls have a sort of forest-camo look to them. Sigh. It’s fine, better than white gashes in the green everywhere! 😀

Here’s what the house looked like throughout the day.  A delightful ending after so much hard work. And, Thanks be to God for a solution!