Curious Abbie
Several months ago, Ellie told me about a parenting discussion she had at work. Her coworkers were talking about their kids getting into trouble, and how they knew they were in big trouble when the parents used their middle name. Her contribution to the conversation was that we never used Abbie’s middle to grab her attention because she never did anything that bad. Ellie and I thought about why this was; maybe we’re extremely patient parents, or maybe we just have a saintly daughter. In the end, we concluded that we’re just great parents.
Fast forward to today, and I’m using Abbie’s full first and middle name* in approximately 90% of the time I address her; the other 10% of the time I just blurt out “Abbie” in the hopes of grabbing her attention before she does something dangerous, like run with those scissors that I could’ve sworn were placed beyond her reach.
Gone is our angelic Abbie; in her place is a grabby Abbie determined to get into everything. Her bedroom no longer has visible carpeting, just a layer of clothes that she’s pulled out of her drawers. Our bedroom is in a similar state as we now have piles of freshly pulled clothes covering the floor instead of the piles of dirty clothes we’re used to tolerating until someone gets around to laundry.
There’s not much I can do to secure our wardrobes, but I can block her access to our DVDs. We amassed a tower full of DVDs in our pre-children days. We never have time to watch them now, but it’s important to me that I protect them so that in a few years when our children are older they can laugh at the primitive way we used to watch movies. Abbie discovered our DVD collection a couple weeks ago, and has since taken up the task of strewing every case within reach across the living room. She loves opening the cases, snatching the enclosed literature, and ripping the discs out of the holder. Don’t even think she holds the discs only by the edges either.
I eventually tired of doing important work in another room like washing the dishes or checking the internet and returning to the living room to find it decorated in a movie bootlegger motif. Looking at the tower’s location this morning, I realized that the living room might not be the best spot to leave it, especially since it was right next to her toy box. With this in mind, I moved our DVD collection out of the living room and into our bedroom where we could at least limit her access to it. I figured that since I was out of bon bons and watching the third repeat of SportsCenter gives me a headache anyway, why not devote a good chunk of my morning to otherwise needless redecorating?
Now the DVDs are in our room, and when she does sneak in to pull them out they at least tend to stay in one spot. The mounds of clothes she pulled out of our drawers earlier create levees that contain the plastic flood. Ellie says it’s good that she’s curious, I just wish she’d be more curious about putting stuff away than taking stuff out.
* Abigail Leigh
Fast forward to today, and I’m using Abbie’s full first and middle name* in approximately 90% of the time I address her; the other 10% of the time I just blurt out “Abbie” in the hopes of grabbing her attention before she does something dangerous, like run with those scissors that I could’ve sworn were placed beyond her reach.
Gone is our angelic Abbie; in her place is a grabby Abbie determined to get into everything. Her bedroom no longer has visible carpeting, just a layer of clothes that she’s pulled out of her drawers. Our bedroom is in a similar state as we now have piles of freshly pulled clothes covering the floor instead of the piles of dirty clothes we’re used to tolerating until someone gets around to laundry.
There’s not much I can do to secure our wardrobes, but I can block her access to our DVDs. We amassed a tower full of DVDs in our pre-children days. We never have time to watch them now, but it’s important to me that I protect them so that in a few years when our children are older they can laugh at the primitive way we used to watch movies. Abbie discovered our DVD collection a couple weeks ago, and has since taken up the task of strewing every case within reach across the living room. She loves opening the cases, snatching the enclosed literature, and ripping the discs out of the holder. Don’t even think she holds the discs only by the edges either.
I eventually tired of doing important work in another room like washing the dishes or checking the internet and returning to the living room to find it decorated in a movie bootlegger motif. Looking at the tower’s location this morning, I realized that the living room might not be the best spot to leave it, especially since it was right next to her toy box. With this in mind, I moved our DVD collection out of the living room and into our bedroom where we could at least limit her access to it. I figured that since I was out of bon bons and watching the third repeat of SportsCenter gives me a headache anyway, why not devote a good chunk of my morning to otherwise needless redecorating?
Now the DVDs are in our room, and when she does sneak in to pull them out they at least tend to stay in one spot. The mounds of clothes she pulled out of our drawers earlier create levees that contain the plastic flood. Ellie says it’s good that she’s curious, I just wish she’d be more curious about putting stuff away than taking stuff out.
* Abigail Leigh
posted by Matt at
10:30 PM
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