The Breach

We have a rule in our house: no kids on the second floor.  They took over the basement Man Room and theater, they took over the first floor great room, and they have decidedly claimed the back and front yards, including deck and front porch.  But the upstairs?  It's ours.  It houses our bedroom and bathroom, as well as the loft, which is big enough to be divided into both office and sewing room.  None of these rooms requires children.  While that may seem mean and unwelcoming, let me adjust the rule by also saying that children are allowed to come upstairs to our room during scary thunderstorms, nights of bad dreams, weekend morning wake-up calls, and to use the second bathroom should the one on the first floor be occupied.  But those are really the only occasions when they should be up here.

Until now.

With my laptop broken the only time I can use a computer with speed faster than that of a 300 year old turtle (the old computer in the basement) is if I escape to the loft office, and it is very difficult to convince two children that they should be happy to have free time downstairs without Mom.  There has been a breach.  There are matchbox cars strewn about the office floor.  Someone's pajamas are strung across the bridge that connects the loft to our bedroom.  Our bed has been jumped on.  The bathroom has been run out of toilet paper, and a blue plastic stool arrived at the sink just moments ago.

All might be lost.  All three years of maintaining some sort of child-free sanctuary have gone out the window because one small piece of technology, one large brick in our wall of defense against the clutter and detritus and sprawl of young childhood, has come loose, taking down the wall it so carefully supported.  The door to my bedroom is slamming, children are racing back and forth across the bridge, and chaos itself has consumed the final frontier of my adulthood.  It is all toddler now.

Farewell, rooms without toys.  Farewell, peace and solitude.  We had a good run there and I will miss you.