On Sunday, Sam woke up and declared he wanted a big boy bed. I knew this day was coming (he is nearly three and a half, for heaven’s sake), but I was trying to put it off as long as possible. I like having that kid caged up!

But, since he had decided he was ready, I wanted to move on it. His crib is one of those that theoretically makes a toddler bed and then a double bed, and for some reason I had in my mind that make the conversion was going to require serious deconstruction and reconstruction of the whole thing. As it turns out, the “toddler bed” is the crib minus one side. The directions said to remove two screws. Even I could handle that. So, Sunday evening, we got him all set up.

He was so excited.

(Shout out to my good friend Beth and her son for the sweet bedding!)

I, however, was a bit sad. He is my baby. And he’s not sleeping in a crib anymore. Which would lead to the inevitable conclusion that he is not in fact a baby, but I refuse to acknowledge that.

He’s my baby.

Sunday night, after we had read books and said prayers and sang lullabyes and rocked for an extra long time, I carried him over and laid him in his big boy bed.

In his sweet, almost-asleep voice, he whispered to me, “I still need you, Mama.”

Oh, my heart.

This weekend, our family is going to be flung all over the midwest.

Kate’s spending the weekend with Aunt Anna at church camp. Anna wants to indoctrinate these kids into camp at an early age! I am really excited for them both and I know they’re going to have a great time. I can only hope Kate comes back from camp with a pine tree tattooed on her back like Anna did one summer.

Andy and my dad are spending the weekend in Chicago, on their annual baseball weekend trip. I can only hope they don’t come back with anything tattooed anywhere.

So, that means I get to spend the weekend with this guy.

And I am pretty excited about it.

I’ve been trying to think up fun things we could do, just the two of us. All Sam has requested is that we go to “Chick-a-lay.” I’m thinking we may stop at Cosi – I loved it as a kid but haven’t been for many years. I’ve never really taken Sam anywhere like that, just the two of us, and I think it would be fun. Besides – we’re going to need to do something to break up the 5-hour car ride we’ve got in store with us that day! I think we might go to the zoo on Sunday, as well.

Either that, or we’ll stay home and play super heroes. Regardless, opportunities like this don’t come along very often, and whether he’ll remember a weekend with his mom to himself years from now, I know I will.

Sunday morning, I walked out into the kitchen and saw this.

And then I saw this.

And then I googled “What happens when you eat uncooked corn on the cob?” (Apparently nothing. Sam lived to tell about it.)

Boys are gross.