... Z Z Z Z Z Z Z ...

I can hear my dog snoring. There is a hallway and a door between us right now, but her rumbling can be heard clearly by all in the house.

I think it's an age thing - as she gets older, her "sleep sounds" are definitely getting louder. It doesn't matter that her bed is outside the back door ... even when the Caveman and I go to our own bed, which puts an extra room and two doors between us, I still hear her.

This makes me think about bedrooms and sleeping arrangements. We are currently living in a three bedroom house, which can be a little too cosy at times. We unfortunately can't afford to upgrade just at the moment, so the two boys have to share a room. Most of the time this works well - it has encouraged a close relationship despite their eight year age gap. Very often, if our littlest Caveman is feeling a bit out of sorts, he'll scramble into his big brother's bed for the night.

The only problem this causes is that, if big brother is away overnight (as is the case tonight), our little guy becomes quite insecure about having the room to himself. He is so used to having someone else in the room that he has trouble settling in there on his own. Luckily, it's usually easy to get around this issue by letting him spend the night in his sister's room - he gets a mattress on her floor and thinks it's a great adventure.

Admittedly, this doesn't actually take away his discomfort about sleeping on his own, but it does make life easier for us.

The funny thing is, our last house had four bedrooms - so he was used to sleeping on his own there. It's just, since we've been in a smaller house for the past couple of years, he has forgotten how comfortable he was with that. Now, however, our older boy is a teenager and would love to have his own personal space again. The plan is for our next house (when we can afford it) to be a four bedroom again, so that all the kids can go back to having a bedroom each ... and our little Caveman will have to adjust.

When I tried to gently explain this to him, his response was, "What if we get a house with five bedrooms?" I told him that we don't need five bedrooms, four would be enough. His reply? "But, if we get five bedrooms, you and Dad can have a bedroom each as well." I laughed and started to say that wouldn't be necessary, when he leaned closer to me and whispered, "Then you won't have to listen to Dad snoring at night time."

Since the dog isn't the only one snoring more loudly with age, I have to admit he has a good point there!