We'll Always Have...The Spiderman Wall Stickers

Last week I pulled the crib out of storage and put it together for Teo. He's been sleeping in bed with us or in his bassinet in our room, and so hasn't needed it. He's a big crawling guy now, though. Last week he was up one night at 3:30 a.m. and I was so tired I brought him back to bed and proceeded to drift off back to sleep, only to wake one time to find him with my nighstand lamp in his lap, and another time about to crawl off the end of the bed. In the morning I found he'd knocked over a glass of water a couple of inches from my laptop and he'd taken my ipod, stripped it of its headphones, and dropped it down between the wall and the mattress, all while I drifted in and out of consciousness. So I put together the crib (after a decent amount of staring at all the hardware and trying to remember how it all fit together) and rearranged Luke's furniture to make room for Teo.

Now Luke knew he and Teo were going to share a room and he was very excited about it. He said, "Now I can talk to Teo in the middle of the night..." I rearranged the furniture a bit (with some brilliant help from my friend Christina) and set it up so that half the room is clearly Luke's and half Matteo's, with some shared spaces for toys and books. To sweeten the deal, I told Luke he could pick out some new wall stickers for his side of the room.

A couple years ago I bought Luke Thomas the Tank Engine wall decals that go right on painted walls and are like getting customized wallpaper for $15 and next-to-no effort. They're pretty cool and great for someone who is obsessed with trains one year and superheroes the next. I told Luke we could take off all the Thomas stickers on his side of the room and reposition them all on Teo's side, and I let him pick out new ones online. He decided to go with Spiderman II decals, and they came very quickly in the mail. Monday morning he helped me peel them off their wax backings and stick them all over his side of the room, and he was completely thrilled with them.

So Wednesday I'm telling him goodbye because I have to go to a training in New Jersey for five days; I'm hugging him and kissing him and telling him how much I'll miss him, and he says to me (and this is an exact quote), "Hey Mommy—if I forget about you, I will always remember my wall stickers."