Adventure: IKEA!: FAIL

The Boy and I are reading the Hobbit together.  More correctly, I am reading the Hobbit to him and he loves it.  I don't think he gets it, but it does my Tolkien-loving heart good to hear him cry out, "Mama!  Read Hobbit!  Read Hobbit, Mama!"

So after the first couple of pages the Boy started asking when WE were going on an Adventure.  To the extent of informing me that, "Mama like Gandalf!  Daddy like Bilbo!  Boy go on an ADVENTURE!"

*****

The Boy, understandably, loves his books.  But his love means that his books are scattered willy-nilly all over my house.  The chaos is making me a little crazy.  So I've been wanting to get a bookshelf for his room to centralize and organize his books.  Also, so that when he pulls them down in search of his favorites or just for a morning's entertainment, I can blissfully ignore the mess because it's in HIS room, not the middle of the living room.

The need for a bookshelf meant that we really needed to go to Ikea.  So when the Boy began asking for an Adventure, I, like a crazy woman, thought, "Hey!  Let's drive down to Ikea!"

The adventure was proposed by me and happily accepted by Chris and so we set off for Ikea last Saturday morning.

*****

Now, the closest Ikea to us is about 2 hours away.  But since Chris and I had missed seeing each other for a week while I was in Virginia and then he's been working like a crazy man, so we were actually looking forward to 4 hours in the car together to just talk and tell stories and make each other laugh.  And the day started so promising, the weather was lovely, the drive was beautiful, Chris had some crazy stories from the operating rooms for me, the Boy was perfectly happy with his Adventure.  And Ikea is always fun for us.

(I have a deep and abiding love for plain, simple, functional furniture and storage ideas.  And since my whole living room is wall to wall Billy bookcases, Ikea is a very comfortable place for me.)

*****

So we got there, we walked around and sighed a lot about how much we loved this couch or that room idea, or oooh, that pretty-pretty rug.  We found an adorable chair just the right size for the Boy but we passed on it.  We found the shelves we came for, and then we were walking through the kids' area and had the brilliant idea to see if they had a mattress for our toddler bed.

(Remember the toddler bed we bought in Brunswick?)

(We've never been able to find a mattress to fit it.  It's the same length as a crib mattress but it's WIDER than a crib mattress, but not AS WIDE as a twin mattress.  I'm telling you...it's been an enormous hassle to find a mattress for this hunk of oak.)

So we're walking around Ikea and I happen upon a toddler bed and I notice that the mattress is WIDER than a crib mattress!  And automatically Chris and I think we've struck GOLD.  We're so excited.  Never mind that neither of us had the actual measurements for the bed on our person or IN our heads.  But we're both pretty spatial, so we just go ahead and buy the mattress anyway.

*****

I suppose it was hubris.  We deserved it...we were so cocky assuming we knew the size and shape of this particular bed that we have now lugged north.

We got the mattress home and laid it on the bed and it's about 4 inches TOO WIDE.  I could have cried.  Seriously.  So we spent the weekend debating what to do about the da** bed and now the mattress that needs to go BACK to Ikea (if they'll take it back, it's not used, but we had to take it out of the plastic to get it in the car).

*****

But the adventure part was fun and the bookshelf is assembled and looking neat and orderly and beautiful.  Anyone want to make a bet as to how long that will last?