Next Thing You Know She'll Be Dancing to Bob Seger in Her Underwear...

When holding our newborn twins, I remember all the things I enjoyed about babies when they’re little. There’s the tranquility of holding a bottle with no other responsibilities for up to a half-hour while they suck in virtual silence. There’s the tiny diapers that fill the diaper pail slowly and cost less, or at least they will cost less once their sizes are measured in numbers instead of letters. There’s the assurance that comes from knowing that the only food they must and should consume today, tomorrow, and a month from now is milk. The best thing about newborns though, is their inability to make a nuisance of themselves. Sure, they can and will cry at all hours of the day, but that’s nothing compared to Abbie’s ability to misbehave.

Her latest trick to act up and tick off daddy involves the stereo. From the time she learned to crawl to nearby objects, Abbie has always loved anything with buttons to push. At first the only button-festooned objects she could access were things like remote controls and telephones, objects we could easily place out of her reach provided we remember to do so before they wind up in her mouth.

As soon as she learned to stand, she discovered the joys of our stereo, which we thoughtfully positioned at toddler eye-level. She immediately swung open the glass doors it rests behind, and found its multitude of buttons, the LCD display that dances with every push, and the pop out tape deck doors that make convenient handles for pulling herself up.

As soon as we realized she was playing with and potentially breaking an expensive piece of home electronics, we fashioned an elaborate child-deterrent system consisting of a rubber band stretched across the handles on the glass doors, effectively locking the doors shut. That rubber band, and its many successors as they dried up and snapped, served us well, preventing Abbie from accessing the stereo no matter how hard she tugged on the doors, assuming that we left the remote out of her reach, which we always swore we did yet it somehow often found its way into her mouth.

Recently I learned that the rubber band wasn’t so much a deterrent as a strength-training device. After months of reps on the DoorMaster, she finally developed the strength to pull the door hard enough to separate the handle from the door. When she did, the estranged handle went flying across the room along with the rubber band. At least I assume they went flying across the room; I heard a clang sound followed by a thunk sound, and that was the last I saw or heard of the handle.

Now the door flaps unhindered, and the stereo is at Abbie’s mercy. Fortunately she has moved beyond pulling herself up by the tape deck trays. Unfortunately she has grown more adept at pushing buttons. Besides being annoying when she turns the radio on to static, pushing buttons wouldn’t be a problem in itself except that she’s also grown more adept at turning knobs, specifically the volume knob. The house can go from peaceful silence to static amplified to speaker shattering levels in under five seconds.

We’re trying to figure out a new way to childproof the stereo doors without much luck. Their glass attribute eliminates most traditional locks that could be attached. For now we’ll just keep watching her closely and hoping she grows out of it. I figure that by the time she does that, she’ll be old enough to tell on her brothers when they touch the stereo.