This Old Couch

Ten years ago I bought a "No More Kids" couch.

Rob and I had three teenagers. It was time to replace our beat-up couch with something nicer--a couch that wouldn't be climbed on, jumped on, spilled on by little kids. So we went couch shopping. You can imagine how much Rob enjoyed that. We ordered a matching leather couch and loveseat.

I was a happy woman.

A few months later, I was a woman brought to her knees by morning sickness. The mom of three teenagers and I'm pregnant?! The view of my unborn daughter's beating heart on an ultrasound monitor confirmed the reality: Rob and I were having a fourth child.

My "No More Kids" couch arrived two days after I found out I was pregnant. When the men hauled it off the truck and positioned it in my living room, I was upstairs in my bedroom. Actually, I was hanging over the edge of my bed, holding onto a blue plastic bucket, getting sick as a dog.

"Honey, the new couch is here," Rob called from downstairs.

"I." Heave. "Don't." Heave "Care."

Truth be told, I logged a lot of miles on that couch in the past 10 years--with my caboose kiddo Christa.

As a baby, Christa was never much of a napper. But if I laid on the couch and held her, she'd fall asleep in my arms--and I'd fall asleep holding her. We spent hours snuggled under blankets on the soft Italian leather.

We still do.

My "No More Kids" couch became "our" couch.

It's pretty beat up. Christa and her friends have climbed on that couch, jumped on it, spilled on it.

I'm thinking of getting a new couch.

Soon.

But just not yet.

There's a few more good naps left in this one.