The sofa incident

by threegirlpileup

We were a bit groggy and at loose ends this morning, and so were delighted to get a call from my friend Nancy, suggesting that she and her kids come over to play today.  These are very special friends.  I met Nancy taking a childbirth class when we were both pregnant with our oldest children, and she was really my first mom friend.  Amazingly, our second children were then born within about a week of each other, so we have this great matched set of fast friends.  Oliver and Anna–thrown together from birth–have always been kindred spirits, both lovey and wild.

It was a wonderfully peaceful day.  Nancy was working on a knitting project, which I nearly managed to destroy while trying to help her fix a mistake–but then miraculously pulled off the repair.  Maggie and Flora immediately jumped into playing with the playmobil farm, and Oliver and Anna ran around and finally settled into farm play of their own.  There was a volcano (including a plan and diagram courtesy of Maggie) and mint “tea” making outdoors, fairy dress up, puzzles, and some drawing on themselves with markers.

At one point, Nancy and I had been sitting talking and knitting while Oliver and Anna were out of sight in our basement playroom.  Oliver came upstairs with the aforementioned marker on him, and mentioned something cryptic about needles, which made Nancy follow him downstairs to make sure all was well.  From the kitchen, I suddenly heard her say loudly, “Oh my GOD!” which of course led me to bolt down the stairs.  I think I was half expecting marker drawn all over the downstairs (not a big reach for my little one, I must admit).  Instead, this is what I found:

Well, almost what I found.  Actually, there were two very happy small children pulling the stuffing out by the handful and shrieking with delight.  And in case you can’t tell, that is (or was) my sofa. At first I thought they had just unstuffed the pillows, but on further examination I realized that they had actually cut open the back cushions of the sofa and pulled the stuffing out.  Plus there were some cuts to the slipcover.

I was initially optimistic that I could put it back together, but it soon became clear that the sofa was a loss.  We had been meaning to get rid of another sofa in that room, so it looks like that (ugly but comfortable) couch will be the one to go.

The interesting thing to observe was how I was able to maintain my composure during all of this.  I’m not sure if it was the moral and practical support of a friend, or the peaceful and happy mood I was in, or perhaps the realization that I was at least as much to blame as the little ones (what exactly were they doing with sharp scissors unsupervised in my basement anyway??).  At any rate, I’m grateful that this kind of awful incident didn’t escalate into something much worse involving yelling and recriminations.  This week has been filled with a lot of flying off the handle by me, but somehow this sofa incident was so enormous and (let’s be honest) kind of comical that I was able to maintain my perspective.  That being said, there were some stern words to both children about never ever ever ever cutting furniture.

Nevertheless, I think I’ll be putting all the scissors waaaaayyyy out of reach for awhile.

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