76 NewZealandWoman’sWeekly
Catch Jeremy on The Project
on Three, weeknights at 7pm.A bedtime
JEREMY DOESN’THAVEA FULLHOUSE,
BUTHEDOESHAVEA FULLBEDSTORY
JEREMY CORBETT
directMALE
W
e’re lucky. We have more
than one bedroom in our
house. Our two daughters
have a room each and, of course,
there’s the master bedroom for
Mum and Dad. Except it’s not.
Despite our bedroom bounty,
mornings often find our king-sized
bed containing a king, a queen, two
princesses and an assortment of
mythical one-horned flying horses.
It’s not designed for that number
of occupants. Luckily for me, they
tend to congregate around and on
top of the queen, so I manage to
get precious moments of sleep.
But this happens only if I
remember to secure a sufficient
amount of duvet to keep me
covered before the invasion and
fasten it with sufficient body weight
so no-one can remove it from my
slumbering self.
Apparently, I growl like a grizzly
bear if midnight attempts are made
to claim the manchester from me.
This scuttlebutt has never been
proven. I’ve certainly never heard it.
But a happy king needs a happy
queen and a tired queen is not a
happy queen. So it came to pass
that we sat the girls down and
explained the situation. When I say,
“sat the girls down”, I mean they
were lying in bed with us. When I
say “explained”, I mean yelled.
There was much moaning from all
parties as the situation was debated.
Then, surprisingly, our eldest
admitted it was not an optimal
situation and she would remove
herself from the bed forthwith.
King and queen were amazed
and proud that their princess had
the maturity to both empathise and
fix the problem. King and queen
were amazed and surprised when
that same eight-year-old princess
hauled the mattress, complete
with sheets, off her bed, down
the hall and plopped on the
floor right next to us.
“There!” she said
definitively, as she stole a
pillow and bedded down.
Now our bedtime
procedure is thus: Both
girls are put to bed
in their respective
bedrooms. Mum and
Dad go downstairs.
The six-year-old sleeps,
the eight-year-old takes
around seven minutes to
gravitate to our bed.
After one hour, the
eight-year-old pressures
Mum to go to bed. Mum
acquiesces. Six-year-old moves
like a ninja in the night. After two
hours Dad goes upstairs and
transfers both six-year-old and
eight-year-old back to respective
rooms. Eight-year-old immediately
moves her mattress beside Mum
and Dad. Nobody ever hears
six-year-old move, but come
daylight, she’s firmly ensconced
between the king and queen. Dad
is grizzly, Mum never sleeps. Sigh.
Plenty has been written about
enjoying these moments with your
kids, for there will come a day you
wish they still wanted to crawl into
bed with you. I get that.
But nature plays a cruel trick by
jamming all this behaviour into a
few short years, then ripping it away
forever. Why can’t she just share it
out, as needed, over a lifetime?
I guess this grizzly needs to
embrace the cosy, crowded times.