Familial Justice

 Dramatis personae:

Sweetpea, my oldest, almost 11

Pumpkin, the feisty middle child, 8 1/2 

Beans, the really feisty youngest, almost 5

Four years old seems a little early to start organizing protests, but I guess Beans wouldn't agree with that. Among the many things she doesn't agree with around here. This weekend, she staged a sit-in, blocking Sweetpea's bedroom door to protest the injustice of her two older sisters having closets in their bedroom, while she does not. 

And I can't say that the demonstration remained entirely non-violent, as the protester and a counter-protester got into it. Clearly, the authorities needed to step in. 

For a bit of background: this time last year, Sweetpea had her own small room, while Pumpkin and Beans shared a large room. The other room on the 2nd floor was our family room. We parents were on the third floor, along with a small room that I used as an office. Pumpkin, particularly, was not happy with this situation, though her little sister was, perhaps not surprisingly, totally cool with it. Every night's a sleep-over with her big sister! But it wasn't hard to convince her that having her very own room would be pretty great too. So we rearranged things such that Sweetpea had big room of her own, Pumpkin inherited Sweetpea's small room, and Beans took over my office. The big bedroom that was formerly shared by the two youngest became the new family room as well as my office space. 

And all was well, until it wasn't. 

Now, you may not realize this, but building a closet is not all that easy, particularly if the room in question is already kind of small. And even if it was a viable solution, it was pretty clear that the answer to "when do I want it?" was "NOW!!!" But there's a closet across the hall from her room, a weird space that's maybe 3 feet deep, then goes to the left of the door about 10-12 feet. We had a bunch of random stuff stored in there, and I moved some out and piled the rest in the far end so that she could have her very own closet. 

So what did she want to do with the closet? It turned out that she wanted to sleep there. 

Now, since we had already done the totally unfair thing of not giving our four-year-old a closet, you might assume that we had also not given her a bed, monsters that we are. But you would be wrong. In fact, she has a perfectly good bed. 

Which she usually doesn't sleep in. At some point she decided that she really wanted to sleep in a "tent," i.e. a down comforter on the floor, along with a pillow and another blanket, plus a sheet suspended above all this. Nine times out of ten, she'd rather sleep there on the floor rather than in her bed. So maybe I shouldn't have been surprised that she would like even more to be sleeping in a sleeping bag in a closet across the hall from her room. 

Yes, there's also a table and chair in there.