Couching it in the simplest terms

The couch wasn’t new when we got it. That should be clear straight away. I have no idea how old it was or what it had lived through when my brother-in-law and I drove 45 minutes to pick it up three-plus years ago, but we weren’t picking it up from a furniture store.

Still, it looked fine. Not perfect — it had been in a house with a dog that liked to shed, if nothing else — but definitely the epitome of “couch.” It’s a big sectional, making the L and then ending in a big loungey chaise so it’s actually more of a J shape. It was very comfortable upon its arrival in the Kelley house. I fell asleep on it — accidentally or intentionally — more than once.

But then children happened. At first the couch was just a place for them to loll because they couldn’t move much. But in time, they learned to walk, climb, jump, and, ultimately, destroy.

The first change came when we had to reorganize the living room so that the tallest part of the couch wasn’t against the window. That change came because Jordan climbed up on the edge of the couch to look out the window, pushed just so, slid the couch a bit away from the wall, and then *poof*, Jordan slid away. I was literally walking to him to move him when it happened, and suddenly there was a child who had fallen ~3 feet between a couch and a wall and was very sad.

So we rearranged. Turned the chaise against the wall by the window so they could stand and see out the window but (a) lower, and (b) not in a way that could slide the couch.

That move broke one of the legs off the chaise. You can’t really tell at a glance, but it basically sits all the way on the floor now.

Later, we rearranged further, because the boys kept finding more and more demonic ways to destroy it and/or endanger themselves. “The couch is near a bookshelf” became “Jordan climbs atop the couch and stretches as far as he can to climb onto the shelf.” “The couch is turned into a straight line that runs the length of the living room instead of turning like a sectional” became “Lucas parkours all the way across the couch and jumps the edges and things generally turn out fine but his mom gets so dang nervous.”

I don’t for a second believe we or our couch are unique in this regard, but having twin 2-year-olds has made out couch a disaster zone. I was in a bit of denial about it for a while until a couple months ago, when we were trying to find their recently used milk cups to take them back to the kitchen and could not find them. We looked everywhere. Under toys. In blankets. Behind the couch. Over the baby gate. Could not find the dang things. Getting so frustrated. Like, if nothing else, it’s not like the boys drained every last drop of milk out of the cups, and some milk will eventually become some smelly milk. We looked and looked and looked.

And then it occurred to me. The constant climbing on the back of the couch had torn a hole between the back cushion and the couch, which was normally sewn in place. Laurie had even tried to sew it back together once, a fix that lasted about an hour. The hole wasn’t big, but it was big enough for a baby arm.

So I reached. Scratching my shoulder against the metal bits, I pushed as far into the hole as I could, and just felt the edge of a milk cup. So that was where they were. It took some cooperation — Laurie reaching under the couch and basically banging its bottom to move the cups around blindly, like the world’s worst popper game, and me hoping eventually one of the pops would move the cups into my reach — but eventually we got them out. We covered over the hole with a blanket.

But that sort of thing kept (keeps) happening. Another hole appeared. Jordan loves to remove the hole-covering blanket. Oh, there’s fuzz from the stuffing at the tears? Well that’s a fun thing for a baby to rip free from the couch and bring to me like a cat carrying a mouse trophy to its master.

Jumping on the couch breaks springs. Sick babies eventually puke on a couch, leaving stains.

At this point, the couch would be better suited for one we take out to the curb and burn in celebration of a UK victory than as a family seat. To be clear, it’s still comfortable. I’ve fallen asleep on it more than once. Heck, I slept there for most of last night, when Jordan (I guess?) had a bad dream, wouldn’t go back to bed, and only wanted daddy, so we went downstairs and stayed there, me asleep on the couch, him asleep in his dad’s lap. But there are more broken parts of the couch now than non-broken.

I’m sure you’re reading this saying “Well, stop letting the kids destroy your couch.” And sure! I would love to get the kids to stop, maybe enact a rule that couches are for sitting only, insist they stop tearing the cushions or removing the fluff. But honestly, honestly, I don’t know how. They’re 2-and-a-half years old, which means they are headstrong, physically capable, and fazed by absolutely nothing. They yearn to get their point across while also barely understanding points you make to them. Their mom works at a restaurant while I work at my computer. Could I put away the computer completely and just play couch security guard? Of course. But that’s no life.

Maybe this is a sign that I’m a subpar parent. I wouldn’t even argue that hard. But I don’t think enacting rules about couch usage to 2-year-olds who still go into the backyard and dig holes and then show up with facefuls of dirt that indicate maybe they’ve actually been eating their excavation is very effective.

Which is why it’s still our couch. We could afford to replace it, either by finding another used couch on the Facebook Marketplace or actually being grown-ups and buying new. But what’s the point? Our two little terrors are still little terrors. Getting a new couch would be like replacing your favorite crash-test dummy. I might as well let them keep destroying the one they’ve already destroyed instead of giving them a new, more expensive thing to destroy.

But there’s a line. Right now, there are three different access points where they can drop/lose toys into the bowels of the couch (can and have, that is). There is a seat on the couch where sitting on it renders you one with the cushion because the springs are broken to the point that you’re basically sitting six inches lower than you would have. The chaise is almost impossible to move at this point because the broken leg pushes it right against the floor and you can’t get a firm hold.

There will be a point where this couch has been so destroyed-by-children that we have to replace it, whether the boys are done destroying or not. Or at least there could be such a point, unless the boys do finish the prime of their destructive phases first.

I dream of a day where I can get a couch with built-in recliners, or a couch and a recliner separate, so I can go full dad-mode and fall asleep at any given moment of the day in my recliner, with golf or some nonsense on the TV, and when someone comes to change the channel I can groggily mutter “I’m watching that,” despite the fact that even the golfers can tell I’m unconscious.

But I don’t want to drop a thousand bucks on a new seating arrangement. I never want to do that, really, but I especially don’t want to do it now, when my two little demon children (and, to be fair, their role-model-of-destructiveness 9-year-old sister) would see a new couch as a new challenge, a new thing to destroy.

So we play the balancing act. Right now, the couch is good enough. I certainly will not be showing it to the good folks at Couch Magazine if such a periodical exists. But I can sit on it. Laurie can sit on it. The kids can sit on it. The chaise is turned to run parallel with one of the short parts, so there’s a giant square of couch that works as a family seating area, and there’s still the long part where I can fall asleep. Right now, we’re (barely) winning the fight of “functional couch” against “destructive children.”

And when they’re 2, barely winning the fight is all you want. As long as we can stay just ahead of the point where they’ve destroyed the couch so much that we have to replace it, “barely winning” is sufficient.

I just wonder how long that will be.