There are three things that I don’t enjoy about having young children. The disturbed sleep. The early morning rises. And the mess.
The mess was minimal when the girls were babies: at first we had no toys, then when some were given to us they were confined to one corner where the girls lay. When they started crawling they could carry their increasing quantity of toys around, but it has only been in recent months that the girls have been able to:
1) carry things around in both hands while roaming indiscriminately around the house, distributing small pieces of plastic, coloured blocks and other objects; and
2) pull out the bottom two drawers of their dresser, enabling all their coats and pyjamas to be sprinkled around the house, mitigated only by piling them on high surfaces out of reach. (Unfortunately due to space restrictions, the dresser is in the hallway and can’t be shut away.)
I thought this was bad enough, and then one of the girls worked out how to open the heavy drawers in the kitchen and pull out all the Tupperware. I find it is now best to walk around our house with a shuffling motion, so that instead of sliding on the relevant peg/item of clothing/margarine lid, you can maintain your footing and stay upright.
Last week I decided that I really had had enough of this state of affairs and hatched a cunning plan. We would actively rotate the toys, putting many out of reach and taking out the small items like tea sets and stacking cups only when required. There didn’t seem to be anything we could do about the Tupperware drawer so I decided I would exercise my patience and put up with that. But the dresser drawers I could control. We would swap them with the bookcase in the hallway and barricade them using the pram so that the girls couldn’t reach any of the drawers. It worked with the bookcase, although the books are tightly wedged in anyway.
Late at night we made the swap and set up the pram-barricade. There was a bit of a gap between the dresser and the pram where the bottom two drawers were, but hopefully the girls wouldn’t notice. I breathed a happy sigh of relief.
The next morning the girls surveyed the new arrangements. One scrambled up the pram, climbing up the footrest then pulling on the straps like a seasoned rock climber. The other followed. Because the seat of the pram was angled up to a sitting position, they soon worked out that not only could they climb up and reach the upper two drawers of the dresser, but they could climb all the way and almost venture over the handlebars to the top of the dresser, about two metres from the ground. And not only that but they noticed the gap in the bottom and could still pull out the pyjamas from the second-bottom drawer as well.
That was two days ago now. We’ve put the pram outside for the moment, leaving the dresser exposed. Dad has also borrowed a child-sized plastic house from the toy library that distracts them from the dresser, and I’m now grateful that when not distracted by the plastic house, they can only reach the bottom two drawers rather than all six.
But their newly-found athleticism has meant that we have had to roster the early-morning rises as well as the night-time waking. We can no longer let the girls roam around for an hour while we are in bed.
In terms of mess control, we’re working on rotating the toys. Despite my best efforts, the Tupperware is as pervasive as ever and despite my best efforts, I still find it annoying. The shuffle is still the best way of navigating around the house.
My conclusions:
1) If you have a child there will be disturbed sleep, early morning rises and mess, and there is no avoiding it.
2) Don’t think you can outwit a couple of one-and-a half year olds. They’ll always be a step ahead of you.
