Flashforward to the teen years

This past July we had to do some changing up in the house in order to make room for our favorite family of six from the Netherlands.  Despite the fact that not one but two of the blow up mattresses we procured seemed to pop, all things went mostly according to plan.  What was a surprise to me was how much my own two boys would take to being temporarily relocated to the basement.  I was just going to have them sleep on the futon couch down there and call it good, but in the days of prep before the dutchies arrived, Eli got in on the act.  When I was off trying to locate spare sleeping bag number 5 and 6, he got busy in the basement.  By the time I returned he fashioned up a labyrinth of extension cords to plug in the CD player he had dug out of the Goodwill bag, an old discarded desk lamp he had duct-taped to overhead plumbing pipes, and a clock (pilfered from my bedroom!), all without diverting power from the air hockey table or Wii console.  He pulled an old side table into duty as a headrest and found my grandmother's silverware box to use as a tissue holder.  Kleenex have never had it so good, residing in a velvet lined case.  He then dug through our rack of CD's, popped in some vintage U2 and declared the 'room' his for the foreseeable future.  When he started talking about plans to move the bookshelves down from upstairs to make his walls I had to put a temporary stop on the remodeling process.  And here I had been worried about how he would feel about being relocated from his room for the week.  I never once imagined it would jump-start the teenage years.  But now the Dutch pals have returned to China (because even though they are our very favorite family of six from the Netherlands they did come to us from their home in Shanghai) Eli has returned to his upstairs bedroom.  It might have been the spiders, or the constant creaking hum of the dehumidifier, or maybe just the general gloom of the unfinished basement, but whatever the case, I'm glad to have him back.  He did not leave his penchant for redecorating in the basement, however.  He somehow talked his brother into switching beds with him, and once in possesion of the bottom bunk he quickly got out his favorite roll of ducttape and fashioned up quite the cave using spare bedsheets.  But so far no extension cords, cd players or old school U2.  The teen years seem to be back on hold for a bit here.  whew.