Playmates

Occasionally in the past couple weeks, my boys have been displaying behavior that is quite frankly strange in our household.
If you've ever spent much time with my oldest child, you know that he is relationally very intense. Meaning that he doesn't play well by himself; he needs companionship pretty much all the time. When he was a toddler, I noticed that often his playmates would get overstimulated and naturally need some down time to play by themselves. But no, Coulson never need that quiet down time, he always wanted interaction with other people. Early childhood development experts talk about "parallel play" where young toddlers play next to each other, but not "with" each other. Coulson skipped this phase of development and went right to playing "with" the other kids (kids his own age didn't always appreciate his intervention, but he played well with older friends).
Anyway, all that to say that I don't get much time to myself while Coulson is awake. I purposefully put the playroom right next to the kitchen because I knew that he would never use a playroom upstairs. But even being in the room right next to me is too far away, as he spends most of his time in kitchen begging me to play with him. Anytime I can get him to play by himself with his toys in the playroom for more than 5 minutes, I consider it a victory. I've always been jealous of other moms whose children actually play with their toys without needing to threaten punishment.
Well, now Charlie is getting older and becoming a better playmate for Coulson. When they first started playing together, Coulson would tell Charlie what to do and most of the time he would do it, but fights were frequent because Charlie wouldn't understand or he'd simply rather "parallel play." Then as Charlie got older, he got more opinionated and thus more arguments would ensue. So I've been happy that they're playing together, but not too happy about the referee role. (And teaching kids to get along and work out their own problems requires a lot of patience; they don't learn those things quickly.)
Okay, anyway, lately, they have had moments where both of them actually work together and get along, often for up to 30 minutes at a time. And they're playing together upstairs in their bedroom! Today I was able to completely clean up from breakfast and prep dinner (it was a slow cooker meal, so was making dinner in the morning) and take a shower in complete peace. This is unheard of in our household. And they did it again before dinner tonight and didn't even notice when Casey came home from work (also unheard of...)
So what are they doing upstairs in their room? When I went to make my bed this afternoon (doesn't everyone make their bed in the afternoon?) I noticed that all my pillows were gone. The sleeping pillows, the decorative shams and the throw pillows, all gone. This has also been happening lately. They take all my pillows, all their pillows, all their blankets, even the comforters on their beds and pile them into a mountain on Coulson's bed. Then they take turns standing on the nightstand and jumping into the mountain of bedding. (I'm a responsible mom and I tell them to not get hurt.) When they get tired they turn the mountain into a fort and settle in and Coulson will "read" books to Charlie. Or last night they went into the closet and pulled down all their clothes (I don't think they'll do that again.)
So for my peace and quiet, their room looks like a tornado hit it several times, but the rest of the house is starting to look a little bit better. Everything's a trade-off and I'll take my peace for now because who knows how long it will last.