We have encouraged our kids to make their own beds in the morning for a little over a year now.

It was time as I was becoming disgruntled after clearing breakfast dishes, giving fashion advice about whether Christmas socks and denim-jegging-capris still go with a dress with a leopard-print robe on top and coming up with amazing, top-secret, to-die-for, gluten-peanut-free, uniquely delicious school lunches.

At first, the beds looked exactly as you might expect, like a nine, seven and three year old slept in them and then strategically placed their favourite stuffed animal in the centre of the chaos that was their mangled nest of sheets and said, “Mommy, I made my bed!”

I resisted the urge to fix the beds, comforters draping over the sides, lopsided, dragging on the floor. Pillows stacked sometimes in a pile suggesting there were points for height and if there was a sheet that had been tucked in, it was totally by accident and by no means intentional.

Here we are a year later and the kids not only make their beds without being asked but they are starting to look more like humans have made them and less like the geese have come back to reclaim their feathers.

Yesterday afternoon, Greg mumbled something about possibly dying if he didn’t have a nap so he escaped a Too Many Monkeys tournament happening in the family room and disappeared for twenty minutes.

When he returned, he seemed refreshed, alert and ready to take on the world.

I asked him if he straightened the bed.

I know what you’re thinking. You are such a nag.

But that’s a totally separate issue.

He said, “Yep, the bed looks great” with a new found energy only an afternoon power nap could provide.

Later, when I walked down the hall, I happened to glance into our bedroom and noticed this.

The girls started giggling.

Mom, who made your bed….a kid?