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Jeff's Life
Archive
Jeff Stimpson, 39, has been a working journalist for 15 years. He lives in New York with his wife Jill and sons Alex, 3, and Edwin, four months. He maintains a site of essays, Jeff's Life, at:
JEFF'S LIFE
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Monthly Column... |
by
Jeff Stimpson
Alex sleeps in a bed. Ned sleeps in the crib. This is what we thought.
The other night in their bedroom, Alex gathered up his binkie, Elmo, ragged old T shirt (why won't he get rid of this thing?), walked over to Ned's crib, and said, "Crib? Crib?"
About the last thing I want Alex to do is regress to sleeping in the crib, but- "Alex, do you want to get into the crib? Do you want to get into the crib with Ned?"
Alex began scaling the side of the crib; Ned joined him. They scampered like gung-ho Mexicans up the walls of the Alamo. With a parental heave, they were both over the railing. Jill and I prepared for a darling scene of cuddling, our two boys drifting off with arms around each other as the soft light-
Ned and Alex started jumping up and down on the mattress.
"That's why he wants to go in there!"
Creak creak creak went the springs of the crib mattress. Both boys laughed: Ned in his high toddler ha-ha's, Alex in his tickled squeal. They clung to the railing and bounced and bounced.
"I thought they wanted to sleep together in there," I said. It hit Jill and me at the same time:
"Alex likes it because it's a trampoline!" she said.
Ned's knees bent softly with each landing; he braced his arms on the railing and jumped and jumped. Alex knees bent a second or so after he landed, though, and he seemed to be pulling himself up and down with his arms. About a week ago we got a note from Alex's physical therapist at school, saying that he was making slow progress in learning how to jump. True: Alex can do a lot of things on the playground -- slide, climb, swing -- but he jumps with stiff legs. A kid should be able to jump.
Creak creak creak. I recalled a morning a couple of weeks ago, when Jill and I found Alex's bedtime T in the crib. Another time we found Elmo. I guess we thought maybe he'd handed them to Ned. But now that I think about it, how much sense would that have made? It made much more sense that these two had found some fun after the lights were dimmed, after mom and dad had scrammed into their adult evening world of TV.
This event has implications. "The failure mode of mattresses is the tearing of the cover, generally along a side seam. This comes about because every child eventually turns the crib into a trampoline," reads a crib-mattress primer from www.childrensfurniture.com . "A child who jumps on the mattress puts a lot of pressure on the seam, and an inferior cover will split."
Ned and Alex, do you realize this? I chose to believe they do, just as they realize that Ned is likely the last occupant of this crib in our home. This has been a dutiful and cheerful mattress, stains of all sizes, textures, and scents coming off its surface with one swipe of Windex. Alex never put it through such trials when he was the owner: He was more a stand-at-the-railing-and-chatter-like-a-squirrel sort of guy.
"He must have seen Ned jumping in there," Jill says.
Jumping on the mattress is one of Ned's charming maneuvers in the crib, along with asking for a book over and over and over, and allowing Bear and Bully (stuffed friends) to (with dad's help) creep up the side of the crib and bushwhack him over the railing. In the mornings, he leaps and leaps for his freedom. Ned's at home in the crib. So was Alex, in a shier way. Ned will be home in the bed, too, I imagine. He already sprawls in Alex's bed for story time; he rolls through Alex's sleep-space with abandon. On most nights, prying him from Alex's bed and depositing him into the crib makes Ned cry, as he's infuriated with his cage.
It must have seemed sweet to Ned that Alex found something in his crib worthy of a big brother's time, something that drew him away from hopping off his big-boy bed and pawing the toy shelf, away from rattling the doorknob and screeching an almost-nightly demand to be re-admitted to the world of TV. It must have made Ned's heart leap to see Alex scaling the side of the crib that first time, and mom and dad nowhere in sight. Maybe in return, Ned will turn his big brother into a kid who can jump
Copyright 2003 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
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