My beautiful baby is two today. It seems like only yesterday that she looked like this:





Now you're 88cm, about 14kg, and still as wild, loud and a roller coaster of emotions as ever. The glow of pride and elation when you blew out your birthday candle on the first attempt, the cheeky grin when saying "happy birthday" and the squeak of delight with which you opened one present after another (present being one of your few truly bilingual words). Your generosity of cuddles, kisses, and how you love doing "criss cross apple sauce" on mummy's back, or how you launch into an upside down baby without warning. Your infectious laughter, and the way you find so many things "funny!" or the way when you don't like something you'll say "sorry mummy sorry". How you know how to get your way with an irresistable "do that mummy pleaeaeaease!" So much energy, joy and happiness.

Happy birthday my little firecracker, I love you to bits!

Our house has been invaded. The invaders either live in pots or tubes, and are invariably named "blue" or "blau" by Cubling. They have captured her very mind. Their effect on Cubling is that of a class A drug, the addiction is powerful and shows signs of dominating her very life, with ripple effects on her immediate family. In desperation to lay her hands on any of the invaders, Cubling's language has made leaps. Words like "off", "blue", "yellow", "pen" "paper", "draw", "brush",  "in there", "messy" and "look mummy" (she can say the latter up to 15 times in a row without even taking a breath) are terrorising Cubling's parents. The invaders have strange transforming effects on paper, walls, tables, chairs, floors, eyes, ears, arms, tummies, hands, skin and sometimes even paper. Once the drug is applied, there are permanent marks left on such surfaces which are only pretty to the eye of the agents of Cubling's birth and conception.

However, the liquid alien invaders have a certain attraction and come in handy for the creation of birthday cards for other toddlers who all happen to turn two at the moment (I wonder why that is) and are duly recycled in such manner.

In the meantime, mummy is trying hard to explain that permanent marks on paper are very nice, permanent marks on furniture and walls are less so, applying the drug of choice to tongues, inside ears and to skin in general is not recommended as it results in serious scrubbing and cold turkey (separation from alien liquids).

Cubling is currently deeply steeped in her blue phase as befits a future Picasso. This extends to both waking and sleeping times of the day. Her dreams are taken up by exploring why yellow is not blue and blue is not yellow, and why red starts with a letter that Cubling cannot for the life of her pronounce, so therefore should not denominate such an important representative of the invaders. Upon waking, oftentimes a panicky and urgent "blue! Yellow!" can be heard, a further sign that the invaders have taken control of her mind.

Cubling has a good sense of humour. There's nothing better than her infectious giggle. Her excited super fast dancing on the spot when she knows it's time for bath time bubble fun with her cousin ("bubbles!"), watching In the Nightgarden ("baby!") or going to the park ("seesaw seesaw seesaw").

She finds this hilarious:


(http://www.infoscotland.com/gogreener)

She's totally and utterly into play doh, drawing and painting, gardening (which usually involves scooping up stones and putting them into flower pots, onto the grass and into flowerbeds, or stealing the soil out of the flowerplants). Thanks to her alphabet obsessed cousin, she will now also point out every "S" and "O". Her counting is rather interesting - she always leaves out "one", which is kind of logical, after all if there's only one of a thing it doesn't need counting, does it? So she goes: two three four five eight nine ten!, sometimes also: zwei drei vier five acht neun zehn! and sometimes even: three two nine blue!

She definitely has an extended blue phase, all colours are blue/blau, although she can say yellow, green, pink, purple, brown, weiss, lila, silber, orange. It's almost as if "blue/blau" means "colour" to her. Her "k" is consistently a "t" and that means that OK becomes OT, which is ever so cute and has gladly taken on in frequency over the past week after a rather frustrating couple of weeks where her answer to absolutely everything was NO.

Her favourite words at the moment are "a dassa", which she uses for things she isn't confident to say (I wonder if it is a variation of "was ist das"), moon, spoon, star, fish, draw, books. She also loves first names, and her vocabulary expands steadily. She is quite clever to pick up bits of conversation not directed at her (like me asking hubby who this band "Elbow" were as I'd never heard of them so far, which made Cubling helpfully point at hubby's elbow with and explanatory "ebow" to make sure mummy knows what an elbow is. Still no sentences, but many more words, including preprositions, adjectives and lots of words I don't understand. She can now imitate new words if they are repeated to her, she doesn't always do it but she can if her mindset is thus. Her cousin is still bound to overtake her active German vocabularly in the next few weeks, but then again, he's exceptional so there's no real competition there.

And the big news of the week is that weaning from mummy milk has been completed. The last feed (morning feed, theoretically any time after 5am but with Cubling waking earlier most nights and not getting back to sleep, this feed had slipped back to 4am or even earlier on some nights) was hard to get rid of. So here's how it all went:

I weaned her off the evening feed in 3 days, day number four she didn't even ask for it anymore. The feed was replaced by books and I explained that she was now a big girl and didn't need mummy milk but could have cow milk from a cup. One night of slight protest, 2 nights of asking for milk, and that was that. Phew, easy.

The morning feed took 3 full weeks to get rid of. It was fine on working days, I simply cuddled her until she would eventually fall back asleep, sometimes that meant 2 or 3 hours of tossing and turning and regular little cries. I was knackered but being used to interrupted sleep and constant sleep deprivation, it was fine. Then, the weekends when I had to consider the sleep of her cousin, it was harder. I didn't want her to cry and usually gave in to feeding her just to keep her quiet. So 2 weeks we had 4 days a week no feed at all, 3 days a week a morning feed. By week 2 I knew that there was no milk. Week three we managed with no feed at all, but still lots of waking and crying and cuddling to calm the crying. This is us at the end of week 3. Last night she slept through and spent the whole night in her own good bed - this is worth mentioning because it very rarely happens - she usually wakes at some point during the night with a big big cry and won't stop until taken through to our bed, so I'm really not used to waking up in the morning withouth Cubling beside me. And did I rejoyce in jubilation? No, of course not, I panicked, thinking something MUST be wrong because Cubling NEVER sleeps through. But actually, last night she really and truly did and she was of course perfectly fine.

Anyway, where was I? After waking her and taking her through to our bedroom for a bit of play and cuddles, she asked for milk, but with a cheeky grin. I complied. She didn't latch, just pretended to, then shook her head - mimi all gone. Other side, the same. A big smile on her face. She doesn't miss it. Neither do I. In fact, it felt like she didn't quite remember how to do it. And I didn't quite remember what it felt like either. Gone like it never happened. We were both very attached to those special calming moments of closeness and nurture. It lasted so much longer than I ever imagined, but I'm happy that this is it. It took 4 weeks to wean, without forcing the issue too much, and on the whole it was much easier than some people made me believe. Bye bye magic mummy milk.

Why did I feed for so long? Because it got easy. Because it was convenient. Because it made her settle and sleep. Because it meant I didn't have to spend hours during the night calming her. Because it's good for her. Because she liked it so much. Because for all the pain and worry at the beginning, I wanted to make sure it had been worth the effort. Because she doesn't drink much milk or other liquids during the day. Because it soothed her so well whenever she was ill. Because it worked, felt right and good.

Cubling learned (to say) a new word today. It is Schneemann. Need I say more?

All is quiet in the Cartside home. A miracle of sorts. Listening in disbelief to the baby monitor, all I can hear is the deep breathing of sleep.

The disbelief was nurtured by the past two months or so. First there was illness, and weeks where her sleep was interrupted and unwieldy. She would end up in our bed as early as 11pm, to keep all three of us awake for most of the night. OK, that's an exaggeration. I'm an amazingly good sleeper and will go back to sleep after most disturbances, but disturbed my sleep was. There were feet in faces, head banging against head boards, fists and tosses, upside downs and biting of shoulders. I don't mind co-sleeping but I do mind getting my head kicked in.

Then, for some reason, bedtime became an impossibility. 8 o'clock? Not Cubling. One night it was as late as 10.30pm before she would finally succumb to sleep, only to wake up soon after. In the morning she was cranky and it took us almost as long to wake her as it took us to get her to sleep. On average, she would sleep at 9pm, and only after mummy sitting with her at the side of the bed for at least 45 minutes.

The magic of mummy milk had disappeared. Feeding to sleep? Those were the lucky days. Now it was time for temper tantrums at nap and bed time. I was ready to leave her to cry because I was at the end of my tether. I did so for about 5 minutes now and then. Result: projectile puke over bed, carpet and clothes, or the HOLDING OF THE BREATH. I don't know what's worse. Unfortunately, thanks to Cubling being ill, the no night time mummy milk rule had also gone right out of the window. 2 weeks hard work of night weaning for nothing.

We audaciously had bought tickets for a night out. We don't get many nights out as a couple. Babysitter was organised. As the week progressed, it was clear that Cubling was having none of it and in spite of starting bedtime at 7pm, she refused to sleep anywhere near the time we would have had to go out. Thankfully, childminder stepped in and Cubling went on a sleepover. Childminder kept sending messages to make sure we wouldn't  worry. I wasn't worried, I was delighted to have a night's break. And I don't feel guilty about it.

Decisions were made. I had planned to fully wean at 22 months anyway and a sleepover at the childminder seemed a good start and a good reason to have more than just one drink. So far it's been going ok. The evening - before bedtime - breastfeed has been successfully substituted by reading books. She still asks for milk, but she accepts a simple "no". She is happy to cuddle on the same chair and read books. She demands books more than she demands milk. I'm flabbergasted. Strangely, at the same time bedtime has improved. There were two naptimes and two bedtimes where I let her cry for a bit while being present, eventually stopped her cry by explaining why I couldn't stay with her, that I had things to do, that I needed to go to the loo, that she was a big girl now and could fall asleep by herself. That I would come back in a little while. She said "ahaa", nodded, and let me leave. The crying had stopped and she fell asleep. It was eye opening. All she needed was reassurance that I wasn't far away, some light before falling asleep, a soft toy to hold and to count ears on.

Three nights on and tonight we've reached the 8pm landmark with a mere instant of protest when putting her into her cot. Her waking has improved too and she's now in her cot until about 4.30am when she usually wakes (I don't count regular shark screams and one minute whinges as wakings) and still gets a breast feed to get back to sleep, in a slight break from my "no feeding before 5am" rule - 4.30 am is so much better compared to the weeks before when she would wake half hourly that I'm being generous that way. Next step will be final weaning and then the end of night time transfers. One small step at a time, simply because each change will mean energy and disruption during the night and that is difficult to bring up as working parents.

For now, I'll have to think of things to do in the evening. Let's hope it'll last.

(I wrote this post for the benefit of other parents who struggle with a toddler who still doesn't sleep through or doesn't settle easily in spite of following a strict bedtime routine. I know how disheartening it is to see other children the same age sleep a 12 hour night without a whimper. If you have experiences of a problematic sleeper, it would be great if you could share in the comments box or leave a link to a blog entry on your own blog about this issue)

This is a post I started ages ago, maybe something like 6 weeks or so. Then came both a break from blogging and Cubling's long awaited language explosion. However, to record a phase in the bilingual development of Cubling, it's still an interesting summary. So the start of this post and its list were done at 20 months two weeks. Her sudden increase of language happened at 21 months and lots of interesting things are happening linguistically right now, at 22 months. Admittedly I tend to get a bit freaked out by her cousin, who at only 12 weeks older can put the whole alphabet in order (and has been able for a while), count to 20, spell his name and picks up German words from Cubling at a speed which is surreal and makes me worry that within a month he'll speak more German than Cubling. Just at the weekend, he learned how to count to 5 in German. Just like that. Cubling can't even do that in either language and she has my input every day...

Cubling speaks mostly English. The 10 % or so words she uses which are German are these: (I refrain from making any interpretation at all plus I'm sure I missed a good few)

da (there)
Schlüssel (key)
heiss (hot)
nein (no) - although she usually says "no"
Bagger (digger)
Mann, Baby, Mami, Banane, Pippi, Baer, Hand, Schuh (ok these have the benefit of being the same in both languages)
Opa
Ei (egg, it's handily pronounces the same as "eye")
Mimi (babytalk for milk, not strictly speaking German)
wauwau (babytalk for dog, like woof woof)
dada (that is for "noch mal" - "again")
Haar (hair)
Dampf (steam)
Baum (tree)
hoch (up)
Tschues (bye)
Hallo (she used to say this when in Germany, once back, she went back to saying hiya)
Handschuh (glove)
Zug (train)

So, what's been happening since this list is that she has new words every single day. She still makes good use of every word. For instance, everything that has a handle and can be put into a hand and carried is called "hand". Every colour is "blue" and "blau". Every letter is either "a" or "b". She also uses lots of distinguishable and consistent utterances that sound like words but are neither English nor German. I'm sure she"s making up some sort of Cubling speak. This week, prepositions entered her mouth. It's all up, on and in. Verbs and adjectives are arriving as well, wash, jump, nass (wet), nice, draw. Her favourite new word is more (which she learned much later than I would have expected, probably because I ususally shove more food into her than she wants and she doesn't really have to ask for more). When we try to get her to say "more, please" she'll have to split it into two utterances, saying the please delayed, and with a lot of effort. So we're not at the two word stage. As far as I can tell she does not use German exclusively, nor exclusively German with me. The latter I can understand because I do speak English with her when other people are around and don't stick to a relentless "German only" rule. It surprises me though that she uses German words with other people, so she may not yet really distinguish between the two languages. At the same time there are words which she used with the childminder for a long time before using them with me.

She can now also complete the end of nursery rhyme verses, sometimes rather amusingly confusing which rhyme she is on (the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon, the little dog laughed to see such fun and the dish ran away with the star). She can half count (she can usually get the next number up to 10 in both languages when I count but she doesn't count by herself - her own counting goes like this: two three, three two, five!). Her special words such as "doos" for "flower" are still there in spite of being able to say flower and Blume. Spider is lily (and crickets too), and yoghurt is loly. Those words I understand, then there are countless words that I don't understand. It took me weeks to get that di is "sky", mice is "knife" and sine is "swing". On the other hand she can say rather difficult words perfectly, like seahorse.

The other week her first proper plural made an appearance. She puts and -s onto any word, so to make a plural, she had to think up a new strategy. I was rather proud of it - she doubled the first letter of the word. Noses therefore are nonies. What she learns best at the moment are personal names. Ok, she may call any blond boy by the name of her cousin, but she delights in calling people by their name and still shouts a loud hiya to anyone she sees in the street, as if they are her best pal. This includes wooden ducks and dogs amongst others (hi wow wow, hi duck).

Other than that, she loves impersonating older children: her very convincing "wow!" was a great party trick for opening presents and really convinces anyone that she thinks she's just seen the best thing ever. And I'm sure she impersonates Upsy Daisy most of the day. The similarities are cunning.

Oh the fun of shopping with a toddler. There's nothing like it.

You know those foldable seats for toddlers in your trolley? Well, Cubling, if sat in one, protests and makes herself into a wooden board when trying to put her in, accompanied by a loud and definite "no!!!", followed by wailing and her very new loud protest shout (which is ever so cute, and I fear our laughter doesn't do anything to discourage her from it). So it's the trolley itself. Mummy pretends she doesn't see the "no children standing in trolley" sign on the handle.

Once in the trolley, she loves helping mummy putting her shopping into the trolley. For 2 minutes. Then she decides it's so much more fun picking the shopping items up and throwing them out of the trolley. Alternatively, how about climbing on top of the shopping? It's particularly interesting to observe what happens if you stand on the box of chocolates, the box of eggs or the bottle of milk. That's good fun. Next, she discovers the toothpast. Cubling likes to brush her teeth. While mummy is taking advantage of quiet toddler with attention focused on a toothpaste box and tries to sneak in as much real shopping as possible, Cubling opens toothpaste box, opens toothpast top, removes protective foil and squeezes toothpaste into her mouth. Mummy gets suspicious when she hears "yum yum". Toothpaste has created a definite appetite, so there's some wailing for food. Mummy offers banana. Oh the look on Cubling's face. How dare you mummy. So mummy picks up some crumpets and opens them, hoping she'll not be done for shoplifting. That's better, says Cubling's face.

15 minutes into the shopping, all of this is no longer particularly attractive. The time has come for some wailing, shouts for "hoch!", "daddy!", "mummy!" (incessantly I should add) until one parent (if present) decides to give up contribution to shopping and instead run after Cubling in the shop. She doesn't walk, she runs. Her running style is that of a racer, she'll go fast, faster and then falls flat on her nose (commentary from her: "fall, nose!", points at her nose, gets up again and repeat). If second parent is not present, all attempts to hold her hand in one hand and trolley in other are futile as she throws herself on the floor if her hand is held and won't get up until hand is released. She thinks that's a great game.

If parent 2 is there, she'll just run through the supermarket, playing chase, pick up random things and throw them into the trolley. Sometimes she collides with other people and other trolleys. Pretty much normal supermarket behaviour.

Then comes the checkout nightmare. She has to be bribed with crips to sit in the trolley seat. This works rather well and she happily munches away, saying "Hiya" to all the people around her, pretending to be oh so cute, while mummy feels increasingly guilty about toddler's diet.

All the while mummy hardly hides her amazed stares at parents who shop with more than one small child and comes to the conclusion that they must have drugged their kids before venturing out.

Cubling discovered her love for two new books last night - the Secret Seahorse and a book about a Penguin who doesn't speak to a child. Her all encompassing excitement at spotting the hiding seahorse on every page was getting me to laugh hysterically in itself. Then she spotted the octopus. Her face brimming with joy, she pointed to it and exclaimed with pride in her discovery: "baby!!!"

All right then. Babies look like octopae (octopusses? surely not). Actually, come to think of it, there is an undeniable resemblance... (incidentally, she described the jellyfish as a nosewipe, and consistently calls an owl a cat).

The one thing that I marvelled at was how the miserable, excessively crying little baby Cubbler has turned into a confident little girl who has bucketloads of fun and finds the amusing side in everything she sees, bursting out in intoxicating and highly contagious laughter as she shares her world with us. Knowing that she could turn into such a happy, active and funloving person would have made it easier to remain positive in the first few months.

Christmas has descended on Glasgow. And Cubling is loving it. She went to see Nikolaus on Sunday. For those non-teutonics amongst my readers, Nikolaus is the same guy as Santa Claus, in his original religious incarnation - his saint's day is in fact the 6th of December. In Germany, children put out a red plastic boot (you can call it a stocking) or a plate on the eve of the 6th of December, to wake up in the morning and find them filled with nuts, ginger breads and oranges. At some time in some places, the 6th December was in fact the day the presents were given, rather than Christmas Day. Nikolaus goes back to an actual person, the 4th century bishop of Myra in case you were wondering. His attire is red and white, with a mitre and bishop's stick. He looks very similar to the Christmas Man (Father Christmas) who gets more active later on in December which causes neverending confusion among German children. Apparently, Christmas Man is the same guy as Nikolaus, just that he's been stripped of his religious attire.

Usually, Nikolaus runs around with his mate Knecht Ruprecht, his servant with a broomstick, not for flying, but for chastising those little ones who've not been good throughout the year. Here in Glasgow, courtesy of the Kinderclub, Nikolaus left his scary pal at home and only came with his big sack of goody bags.

We'd tried our best to prepare her by reading books that featured Nikolaus. She knows his name and calls him "man". She's seen a few moving/dancing/singing/jingling Santas in gardening centres and her response was a very definite "no!!!" (shakes head vigorously and runs off in opposite direction), so we were a bit worried. On Sunday, though, Cubling was very brave indeed. Initially, when Nikolaus walked into the room, she panicked, especially because the only escape route would have involved passing him on his way in, thanks to the impressive number of German children in this city who were all sat on the floor of the Glasgow Steiner School hall. So we got lots of "no!"s, little screams, escape twists and cheerful mummy babbling efforts, reassuring her that Nikolaus is a really lovely guy who is handing out wee sacks for every child, see, sure you want want as well, don't you? She was happy enough to watch from a distance as Nikolaus handed out bags to all the children. When Cubling's name was finally called out (thankfully with plenty of getting used to this bearded man in a strange coat), she bravely let mummy carry her very close to the scary monster bishop, and took her bag off him. And dead pleased she was with herself too, giving mummy and daddy a very proud smile even more so when she discovered that the bag contained... CHOCOLATE! (and a plastic spider I dare to add, which made ME jump right into the air).

The Childminder has put up all the Christmas decoration, and boy, she's been busy. Cubling thinks it's hilarious: There's these snowmen who come with a carrot as a nose and a pot as a hat. Every time she sees one she bursts out laughing, saying "nose!" "hat!", it must be the funniest sight on earth. There are about 10 images of snowmen in the childminder's flat, so plenty of hilarity to be had. Oh and the Christmas trees... Every tree she sees (Christmassy or not) is pointed out, but the ones with lights, they get an extra special "tees!" treatment (she pluralises everything at the moment. Maybe she possesivises, who knows, let's say, she adds "-s" to words).

Other things that get her hilarious chuckle:

- images of women with a face mask on
- images of children with face paint on
- ducking the duck into the bubbly bathtub
- any image of bearded men wearing red coats
- mummy crawling on all fours (mummies are supposed to walk upright)
- and yet another snowman.

We're working hard on the concept that an advent calendar means only one chocolate per day. I know it's not easy, I still struggle with it myself. It's a bit hard on her really to have so many chocolates in easy reach and having to wait a full 24 hours to take one out.

I think my counting slacked when Cubling was about 19 weeks, and so it does with months as well. She's well past the 20 months mark but in spite of this I didn't want to miss out on the lookie lookie what I'm up to now bit.

This is what's hip in the life of a 20 months old:
In the Nightgarden. Still, and increasingly so. She delights in fetching her Upsy Daisy doll when she sees her on TV. She calls her Ahdis, with emphasis on the second syllable (she's really French). She's also discovered that whenever she presses on the "b" button, the toy says "b", and madly imitates it (same with "c"). Sometimes she plays on her own now, but she still follows me wildly through the house, it's still unthinkable to be in a different room than her (unless I explain for 5 minutes that I'm just upstairs to fetch something and will be back instantly, promise).

She loves testing me. No go places are great, she goes there, stops, waits until I notice, gives me a cheeky look and continues to the no go place only once I look and pay adequate forbidding attention. The same goes for climbing on top of things that would cause damage in case of a fall. She's very cuddly and very generous with her kisses. This now extends to nighttime where she's into a new habbit of waking between 1 and 4 and insisting on coming into her mummy and daddy's bed. She'll sleep fine after that and I'm usually too tired to go through the half hour crying bout that would be needed to settler her back in her cot.

She knows so well what she wants and is pretty clever in communicating it. She uses signs that I never taught her, she just makes them up herself. Language wise she's still at the singe word stage and adds to her vocabularly slowly but steadily. When I insist on her using German words, she sometimes uses them now, but the problem is clearly that she knows I understand English and can't be bothered using German even if she knows the word. However, we've agreed on saying "hoch" for up, though "down" is still the winner over "runter". "No" is her favourite word (apart from Ahdis, doos (flower, don't ask me why) and eeyai (cat) and man - the latter two relate to her two favourite books, a pop up version of "We're going on a bear hunt" and Lucy Cousins "Katy Cat and Beaky Boo"). Some of her most recent words are "no touch" "trees" "cheese" (when holding camera).

She's now quite into helping me. She'll help with the dishwasher and knows exactly where things go. She'll set the table (now that she can reach it, before she set the floor in front of the table) and help empty/fill the washing machine. Sometimes even with clothes. She doesn't like things on the floor - so if in a shop and something is on the floor, she wants it picked up, same with litter. Somehow this preference hasn't at all translated into her not throwing the entire contents of bookcases and toy baskets on the floor and spreading them into every room she has can.

She seems to have calmed down a bit as well. We can actually go to music time in the local library and she won't dash for the door constantly or empty bookcases quicker than I can fill them. Her attention span has also improved so that she can tackle wooden jigsaws and complete them with a bit of help, rather than just emptying them on the ground. In fact, I'm writing this as she happily clambers over me, plays with wooden blocks and occasionally asks to see a baby picture on the laptop. A month ago I would not have dared try and blog while she was in the room with me.

Her most recent trick is jumping. Well she doesn't quite get off the ground yet, but it's getting there and she loves showing it off. She has amazing eyesight and spots things that take me ages to find, even if she tells me it's there. We can go on trips without the buggy (if short) and her habbit of running off wildly has improved big time - although she still loves to play at the "I'm going to lie on the ground if you try and hold my hand in the supermarket" game (no tantrum, just a cheeky giggle as she does that). She has even started counting - without saying the numbers, but she'll point to all items of one kind one by one, as we count. She'll make a wee melody whenever she sees a musical instrument, even when she sees an instrument in the window of the neigbour, i.e. far away and not audible.

I've stopped reading milestones books, so have no idea how she compares, just enjoying the fun things she gets up to. And she is fun, she enjoys everything and it's now very easy to find activities that she enjoys and that keep her happy. The only whining times are when she sits in the highchair and has finished, and at night when she's had enough of her cot. Just as well we've got a super king sized bed...