Chloe Abhors a Vacuum

As a stay-at-home dad, I’m responsible for many duties around the house. I cook the meals, clean the bathroom, wash the dishes, watch the Cubs, blog the, um, blog, complain about the Cubs, and, of course, vacuum the floor. We used to follow a relaxed vacuuming schedule, vacuuming only before company visited or whenever the carpet’s color turned a rich shade of pet hair. When Abbie started crawling, though, vacuuming became a very important chore, much more important than my efforts to pick up clutter, which inevitably results in throwing away important documents left haphazardly lying about the house. With her newfound mobility, she could navigate to small chunks of dirt or dust horses (they were bigger than bunnies) and place them in her mouth. Plus anything touching the floor tends to gather crud from the floor; it’s bad enough when she throws a block and it comes to a rest with a shag look, but when we take her out in public wearing clothes with enough dirt accumulated in the folds to sow turnips seeds, other people view that as a sign of inferior parenting.

We now use a strict vacuuming schedule of twice a week, a schedule so strict that many weeks we actually adhere to it. By vacuuming that often, we can suction up dust accumulations before they reach the bunny stage, sometimes as early as the echidna stage. Vacuuming twice a week, though, means I have to pick up the floor twice a week. At any given time, she will have strewn about a dozen toys across the living room. A dozen toys may not sound like much, but remember that by law every toddler toy must consist of at least a hundred loose pieces, which is pretty amazing considering every piece must be too large to block a toddler’s airway. Toddler toys use the same compression technology utilized in clown cars and airplane cargo holds for storing all of their loose pieces. I must pick up and store every loose piece, otherwise they impede the vacuum’s path, missing large swaths of carpet, and Ellie is liable to ask if I just used a lint brush to spot clean the floor. As I scurry about the room collecting toys to deposit into her toy box, Abbie is usually standing at her toy box yanking things out. Her removal rate is about half of my deposit rate; when I deposit half of a ball while she removes a quarter of a block, I pick her up, dump the final toy shards in the chest, and move on to her room. It has fewer toys, but boatloads of books are scattered everywhere. We have a large rubber tote to store books that allows me to quickly scoop up assorted board books while the tall sides thwart her attempts to read what I just stowed.

With the floor cleared of all non-vacuumable items, I can finally begin to suck. Running the vacuum used to frighten the poopy out of Abbie, but fortunately she seems to have overcome that fear. Some say that a running vacuum will soothe an infant to sleep, but I think that’s just some rumor started by the same people who claim to spend every waking moment in love with their infant.* I used to have to hold her for comfort with one hand while pushing the vacuum with the other hand, but now she stays on the floor wandering under my legs, chasing the vacuum and running away when it comes back toward her. I’m glad to reclaim my hand because I need every free appendage to protect the vacuum from our dog who views it as a giant toy to be attacked with a rubber hose for a soft underbelly that may snap off with one more bite. In spite of those two teaming up against me, I usually manage to vacuum the ideal number of twice per week. Sometimes I try for revenge by running the vacuum right at the dog, but the joke’s on me when I turns out I’m actually aiming for a dust dog.

* Remember that when talking about an infant, that’s a lot of moments spent awake.