One Thousand Words

Niko’s overnight at his grandparents’ went well, to a degree. He ate all the clementines in the entire world, so if you’re having trouble finding them in your kitchen or store, it’s because of him. He ate a bunch of other fruit and veg as well. Child acts like that stuff is candy. <3

He missed his nap on Friday, didn’t get to bed until after 9:00 pm, and missed his nap on Saturday as well as again going to bed later than usual Saturday night. Now, he slept all night long on Friday, he cooperated with bedtime and slept well. But he’s running on a sleep debt and that caught up with him last night (Saturday night). He woke up screaming and sobbing several times. Well, I say “woke up” but at least at first he was still asleep.

The first time he woke up he was sobbing and screaming and thrashing around. I asked him if he was awake and he said no. I told him he was in his own bed in his own room in his own home and he was safe, and he sobbed that he wasn’t safe, he wasn’t safe at all. He demanded to touch Nesko’s hair and then cried because he wanted Christmas presents from Santa. He was really out of it. I picked him up and held him and then Nesko took him, and he woke up and was very different, calm, awake. We eased him back down and left.

He woke up again about an hour later, screaming and thrashing. I got him resettled. He woke up again and I dragged myself out of bed, glassess-less, to resettle him again. He woke up again and came into the bedroom to scream at me for having taken something out of his bed (he was unclear what) (I hadn’t taken anything).

So we took him into our bed and he cuddled in and slept like a log all night.

He is very beautiful while he sleeps. I mean, he’s a good looking kid when he’s awake but when he’s asleep in the pearly light of early morning he just looks luminous and still, perfectly carved, the ideal of a child.

He woke up smiling and alert, laughing, cuddly. I asked him how he slept. “Very well!” he said. Did he have any bad dreams? “No, only good dreams!” He was all bouncy exclamation marks. “You woke up crying a few times. What happened?” “I don’t know, but I stopped crying and I’m not crying now! I’m hungry. Can I have some cereal?”

It’s not even 11:00 now and he’s complaining that he’s tired and cranky and needs a nap, in between singing songs about the CTA (namely, the red and brown lines, and how they thunder down the lines). I think he’ll sleep long and hard this afternoon, and hopefully tonight we’ll all get some peace. My head is killing me.

Technorati Tags: parenting, pre-schooler, sleep

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I want you to imagine that you have 100 year old wooden floors, and a two-cup measuring cup. Perhaps a lovely glass pyrex measuring cup, heat proof and heavy and wonderfully balanced.

Now imagine that someone has taken that measuring cup and filled it with urine.

And now they’ve dumped it all over your hundred year old hard wood floors.

And when you said “HEY! WHAT THE HELLLLL! DON’T DO THAT DUDE WHAT ARE YOU DOING AHHHHHH STOP IT AHHHHHHHHHHH!” they, instead of stopping it, wigged the fuck out and so, instead of cleaning up the urine which is EVEN NOW EATING ITS WAY THROUGH THE WOOD you had to calm them down and help them put the rest of the pee in the potty NO NOT THAT ONE THE BIG POTTY and then reassure them that you aren’t MAD, you’re just cross, and you’re still a happy person and you love them.

And then you had to clean up all that pee.

And throw away the cheese crackers that also got peed on.

And explain that nobody in your household is allowed to eat food that’s had pee on it, sorry, that’s just a rule. That’s an ALWAYS rule.

Imagine that.

That is my day.

And that sudden onrush of pee obviously took Niko by surprise because he peed all over the snack he’d been lobbying heavily for and he wanted to eat that snack, that was no “I’m a dog and I hate your new boyfriend so I’m going to make eye contact and pee on your bed to show my disdain” move. That was no “I’m a cat and I’m going to show my revulsion for you by vomiting in your shoe every morning JUST BECAUSE.” This was an accident, a big accident, in a kid who’s been a totally successful potty user for a really long time now. I do not remind him to potty anymore because most of the time he does a great job by himself. Dude stays dry while asleep 99% of the time.

So what happened here?

I have no idea. Zero. None. Accidents happen. I’m just… I’m so happy it happened not on the (hundred year old, wool, hand tufted, incredibly worn and super absorbent) wool rug. Small favors, I guess.

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“Logo for Daniel Tigers Neighborhood”

I had no idea how much of an impact “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood” had on me until “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” a spin off of the PBS classic, aired. The main character, Daniel Tiger, is the son of Daniel Striped Tiger and some other tiger woman. The other characters are the offspring of original Magical Land of Make Believe puppets, and the aged-up original cast. Instead of puppets, though, the characters are animated in a paper cutout/CGI style that I’m afraid is going to look very dated very soon. The transition from exterior to interior, and from one room to another, already look like cut scenes from older video and computer games.

The theme of the show is emotions. What do you do with negative emotions? What do you do when you’re disappointed or sad? Or scared? How do you handle new things? Daniel Tiger and his mother/other adults/friends travel to different new places (a bakery, a doctor, a school) and talk through what they can expect and what actually happens. It feels similar to Mr Roger’s original show, but kind of… reduced? Simplified?

Niko assured me several times while watching the show that he liked it. “Oh, I like this show,” he said. “Oh, this is a good show.” “Mama, this is the show that I like.” He especially likes when Daniel Tiger says “Ugga Mugga,” he thinks it’s hilarious.

Niko doesn’t usually respond when the tv asks him something. When Dora the Explora or the creepy floating kids on “Super Why” turn their blank, soulless eyes to the viewer and ask a question and then pause for an extended period of time, he says nothing. He just ignores it. When Daniel Tiger asks if anyone wants to “imagine with him” or “visit a bakery with him” or “decorate a cake with him” or etc, Niko answers. He says “No,” but he answers.

My one complaint about the show is that Lady Elaine Fairchilde is historically pretty ugly. She had a big nose and chin and terrible hair and a frumpy red dress. In the cartoon, she’s slender and attractive with a stylish hair cut. I loved ugly Lady Elaine Fairchilde and am disappointed she’s been given a make over. Less-than-beautiful people on tv make me feel better about my own less-than-beautiful bits. But maybe this isn’t the real Lady Elaine Fairchilde but a cousin or daughter or something? I’m not sure.

Her kid is cute as hell, though.

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I grew up in a kitchen with a parent who was a professional cook for many years, which means that a lot of very basic knife (and general kitchen) safety was burned into my brain from a young age. Never put knives in the sink. Never run with a knife. Always pass a knife to someone handle first. Never touch a knife blade. Dull knives are more dangerous than sharp knives. Don’t use a too-small knife. I even know how to hone a knife on a whetstone. As I’ve said earlier, some of my earliest memories are helping my mom in the kitchen and I don’t really remember a time when I wasn’t actively helping.

Our current kitchen isn’t very usable, for a number of reasons, so I’ve been doing the bulk of my cooking solo. Even though Niko is at that magical age where he wants to help and is capable of helping in some ways, I’ve been curtailing that because it’s just so inconvenient for me. And that’s a wrong headed attitude to have, frankly. So lately I’ve been asking him to help me load and unload the dishwasher, put his dishes in the sink, measure coffee into the coffee maker… and cut red peppers.

Yes, I’ve given my baby a knife.

A toddler stands on a wooden scaffolding called “The Learning Tower,” which raises her height to be safely able to work at a kitchen counter. Image taken from the Learning Tower website.

Several people have mentioned using things like the “Learning Tower,” which is a wooden scaffolding that costs quite a bit of money. If we had the money and the space for it I’d totally consider it, but as it is, Niko is very happy on his 2-step stepladder. We pull it right up to the counter and we practice handing a knife back and forth handle first, and then I give him strips of red pepper to slice in half.

We work on paying attention to what he’s doing, to the cutting board and the peppers. We work on how to hold the knife in his hand. We work on remembering that the blade is sharp. We work on how to hold the food steady. We work on not going too fast. And then he hands the knife carefully back to me and we put the peppers in a bowl, and he eats them all because red peppers are basically the bomb.

I know there are dull knives that people use for toddlers. There’s some plastic lettuce specialty knife that a lot of people laud for its dull blade and inability to puncture skin. I considered getting one of those, but in the end decided that with close supervision using a real knife was the better choice. Knives are sharp. I want my child very aware of that, at all times. I want him to know knife safety, and I want him to develop cooking skills that will last him through his life. If you have young children in your life you may very well make a different choice, and I’d love to hear what you have chosen or will chose. But Niko’s enjoying cutting up his own peppers, and he’s enjoying helping me, and he’s learning a lot while doing so.

How old were you when you started using a sharp knife?

Would you let a 3 year old use a knife?

What would you do?

Technorati Tags: child, cooking, kitchen safety, knife safety, parenting, safety, teaching, toddler

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Niko is pretty imaginative, as 3 year olds usually are. In addition to his imaginary friends January, Cup Custard, and Howdy Cat, our house also teams with Mon Mons. I know what you’re thinking, and no, he isn’t talking about Pokemon (although he may have heard the name in that context and picked it up).

Mon Mons do not swim but they live in the water. They do not have fur or scales, they have skin, and sometimes hair. They like to come out of the water and live in the sand. THEY ARE NOT OTTERS. They live in the sand and they eat the sand. They can be any color. They can be red, blue, brown, orange, white. They walk like this *walks sideways, crouched down.* They have two big hands and they use their big hands to TICKLE YOU and pinch you and scratch you. And you say OH MON MON THANK YOU FOR THE TICKLES AND PINCHES AND SCRATCHES. They only scratch you if you’re itchy and want them to scratch you, and they pinch you gently like this *pinches gently.*

We were out running errands the other day and stopped to get something to eat. The waitress gave us crayons and a paper placemat and Niko and I draw on the back of it. I drew a crab and he got very excited because apparently Mon Mons are just crabs. I said “Oh, Mon Mons are crabs?” and he said “YES I TOLD YOU THEY WERE CRABS. Geeze. Mon Mons are crabs. EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT, MAMA.” Then he clicked his fingers together like crab claws and reached over and pinched me (gently). Which is how Mon Mons, aka crabs, say hello.

So now you know what Mon Mons are, and a little bit more about crabs.

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We achieved poop in the potty. Tear-free poop in the potty. We’ve been talking up potty poop for… a month now? Making wide sweeping promises of toys and candy bars and various delightful treats to Niko. And he’s been responding with “well, not today. Tomorrow. I cannot poop in the potty today. I will poop in the potty tomorrow.” Poop tomorrow and poop yesterday but never ever poop today? Ok, whatever. He was running around the house sans-pants the other day when he suddenly piped up “I pooped!” Nesko came running, panicked that Niko has pooped on the floor or something. Nope! He had gone to his little potty, lifted the lid, and pooped in it. Nesko wiped his bottom and said “There, done. Wasn’t that fast? Faster than changing a diaper or cleaning up poopy underpants?” “That WAS fast!” Niko marveled. He pooped again in the potty later that day, too. He hasn’t pooped since but when he does, I’m hoping it’s right in the potty. He’s been consistently dry (including overnights) for the past few days so… maybe we’re done? God, I hope so.

Anyway,I’m now That Parent, talking about my kid’s poop in public, bragging to everyone. Argh.

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Niko pretty much only watches 3 shows: “Word World,” “Sid The Science Kid,” and “Adventure Time.” Yes, yes, I know. One of these things is not like the other. He also watches “Dinosaur Train” when I need to take a shower or something, because it’s on Netflix. (“Adventure Time” is On Demand but some episodes require him to sit in my lap and ask if the Snow Golem is going to fall into the water and where is that Fire Wolf’s mama and tata?) He’s picked up a lot from the shows he watches, including the phrase “Sweet Babies!” when he’s excited or angry about something. As cusses go, that is a GREAT ONE and I approve and it’s way better than him picking up on my hissed “JESUS FUCK”s and “DAMMIT”s when he headbutts me in the eye, blacking it and bending my glasses, or when he tumbles off me and lands square on the edge of my foot, grinding the bones into the ground while also clawing his toenails along my soft foot skin. I… I may need to take out a restraining order on this guy.

Anyway, “Word World” is an educational show that works on letter recognition, phonics, and simple spelling. We watch it together and I help prompt him to make letter sounds/say what letters make sounds and after an episode we’ll go over letter shapes and sounds and maybe practice spelling some words. Personally, I’m terrible with phonics. I’m slightly deaf in one ear, which may be part of it, but a friend of mine who is a teacher casually mentioned once that it sounds like I have an auditory processing disorder as well, which frankly, I find easy to believe. I have a really difficult time discerning, say, the difference between “ch,” “sh,” and “dg/j” which is a pretty big problem with my attempts to learn my husband’s language which has TWO “ch”s, “sh”s, and “dg/j”s. I SAY the sounds right, but when I hear a word I’ve never seen spelled, I have a hard time figuring out if it’s got a ch, sh, or dg/j in it. I have a really hard time sounding words out to spell them.

But! I try to rise above that, and since phonics works for teaching most kids (and adults!) to read and write, I’m using it as best I can with Niko. We look at letters and make their sounds and talk about digraphs and stuff and we sound out words when we’re reading. Niko’s gotten to the OH MY GAWD ADORABLE phase where he “spells out” words totally the wrong way, just with random letters. It just about makes my heart explode with cute. Like, if I were an anime character, my eyes would be huge and shiny and have little hearts and stars floating in them.

This morning, he asked me to spell the word “Jet.” I sat down with a crayon and piece of paper and we said the word slowly together and then broke it down into pieces. Juh! Eh! Tuh! JET! He was able to break it down to sounds, and then figure out what letters made the sounds. I wrote the letters down and TADA! Jet! He spelled it himself, with encouragement/support from me.

I’ve grappled my entire life with poor spelling. Spellcheck is basically my best friend and we’ve had several torrid affairs. I learned to read when I was 3, but remember struggling incredibly hard with spelling in first grade. I failed test after test after test.I think the highest grade for spelling I’ve ever gotten has been a C+, and that was with much studying and writing the words out many times, etc. It’s so frustrating to work that hard and still fail! So I’m really surprised and delighted that phonics seems to be working for Niko, that he understands it, it clicks, and he can link letters with sounds and smash them all together to make words. Nobody mentioned the term “learning disability” to me until I was in high school, and even then it wasn’t an official diagnosis. I really nope Niko doesn’t have to deal with the same fucked up brain crap I’ve had to cope with my entire life, but if he does? I’m totally looking out for it– and for him. And today? He spelled “jet” and that’s just awesome.

Technorati Tags: parenting, phonics, reading readiness, toddler

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Life has been kind of kicking my ass lately. Fun! I’ve been job hunting, there’s been car trouble, Nesko’s still working full time plus some over time plus working with his dad plus trying to fix his car. It turns out that you can’t jam extra hours into the day or extra days into the week, and staying up two hours later than you should just so you have a chance to sit next to and talk with your spouse is a bad idea for both of you because talking doesn’t replace sleep even if said spouse IS really cute.

In more fun news, Niko and I made cookies the other day. It worked out pretty well. We don’t have a table in the kitchen, and we don’t really have counter space, and I can’t really move my enormous heavy stand mixer, so we wound up doing that thing where he stands on a step ladder and I hand him a measuring cup of dry ingredient and he dumps it into he mixer bowl and I remind him not to touch the beater because I like him with both hands thank you very much. And then I turn the mixer on and do all the rest of the work myself and don’t give him the beater to lick because oh god raw egg god no. Then he piles all his toys in front of the oven because that’s the most helpful thing to do when I’m baking. Then we eat all the cookies. ALL OF THEM. I want to do it again, but we’re out of eggs, and the car wouldn’t start Sunday so… grocery trip postponed. (lack of eggs forced me– FORCED I SAY– to eat cold pizza for breakfast. Oh no!)

Niko’s been resisting naps lately, which is a foolish move on his part, because he needs a nap or he… uh. Does not cope well. After several days of nap refusal, he spent most of this morning draped over me on the couch, and is now sleeping in his bed cuddled up with a butterfly hand puppet.

I… should probably tell you about the butterfly hand puppet.

There’s this hand puppet. It’s a butterfly, with a big lipsticked mouth. It’s kind of creepy. Niko is enamored of it, possibly because it looks vaguely like a muppet? There are times when he will not listen to me or respond to me unless I’m talking in a silly voice through the butterfly hand puppet.

“Talk like a butterfly mama! Mama! TALK LIKE A BUTTERFLY! No, mama, no! No singing. Only butterfly can sing. Talk like a butterfly!”

Sometimes he calls me butterfly mama.

I sing the Reading Rainbow theme song in a goofy voice and he sings along.

All this butterfly talking makes my throat hurt. I mean, it literally causes me pain.

But I can’t stop because it’s so adorable and hilarious. Niko brings Butterfly things to eat… rocks and trains, but also flowers he makes out of round tinker toy pieces stuck onto straight tinker toy pieces. He says “I love you butterfly!” and gives the hand puppet a hug and a kiss and I try to eat his face and he laughs and says “naughty butterfly! Oh, I’m not mad at you!” Then he sings a song about butterflies while jumping in a circle.

Is this the best age, or what? Toddlers, man. Toddlers.

Anyway, nap time today, Butterfly coaxed Niko into bed (I only had to scoot him across the floor with my foot A LITTLE BIT) and then read 2 stories to him. I asked Niko if he wanted to sleep with Butterfly. His eyes got big and he laughed nervously. “SURE. YES. SURE.” Butterfly wished him good night and lay down on his pillow and I pulled my hand out. I wished Niko good night and told him to sleep tight. “WE WILL” he promised. Daww. And then he fell asleep in like 30 seconds because holy Christ is he running on empty lately.

DID YOU KNOW: if you read books too often they get broken? It’s true. The words just get worn out. At least that’s what Niko claims. We couldn’t read “Time To Pee” or “I Am A Bunny” because “we read those too much, mama, they’re broken. We broke them. The words are broken. We can’t read those too much.”

We’ve started doing some incredibly lazy and half assed potty training. Nesko released Niko into the wild yesterday wearing a shirt and socks and no pants at all. Nothing. Just his business flapping in the breeze. I set a timer and every 20 minutes Niko sat on the toilet and produced a minute amount of urine and then received a chocolate chip. It was a pretty sweet deal. Eventually it was nap time so I diapered him and put him down and then a friend came over… and it turned out he was faking the nap the entire time and he wanted to party, and since it was his favorite person in the whole entire world I said fuck it and let him. He did the foulest poop known to man, resulting in an emergency load of laundry and bath and the living room smelled really bad for like 20 minutes even though no poop got on the floor or anything, it just funked up the air. He was rashy from it (HE IS A DELICATE FLOWER and terrorpoops give him a bright but passing rash) so I put him in underpants. HE WAS THRILLED. Thrilled I say!  Dude, I have been trying to get him into underpants for months now. Literally months! And he would respond each time as though I were offering to mangle a limb! He was good as gold all evening until I put his bed time diaper and jammies on him. And, I mean, he was still good as gold then, he just wasn’t being manhandled into the bathroom every 20 minutes.

Lulled into a false sense of cocky over confidence, we did the underwear thing again today and after two pee pants in 45 minutes (and this was WITH two toilet visits!)  and a shy request for a diaper, I put a diaper and pants on him. Is he too tired to hold it? Was he only trying to impress our friend? I don’t know. We’ll try again this afternoon, maybe. MAYBE.

Another exciting result of potty training? Niko learned the word “penis” which he pronounces “Pee-Nuss.” It may sound odd that he never used that word before, but we usually use the Serbian word for his penis, which I don’t know how to spell. I think “Pee-Nuss” is hilarious, though. We’ve also hit the milestone that butts are funny, which I don’t know, I guess asses are just inherently funny? Because we don’t have verboten body parts or body labels in our house, and we talk about bottoms and butts and rectums and body parts and nakedness is no big deal. But the other day I told Niko to pull his sagging britches up over his bottom and he said “You mean my… GUZA?!?” (guza is the Serbian word for butt) and then he literally fell over laughing the way that toddlers do. WHATEVER, MAN. Just please wipe your Pee-Nuss after you pee, we don’t need dribbles all over the place.

Technorati Tags: parenting, potty training, toddler

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We’ve pretty successfully transitioned Niko to sleeping in his own bed, although he wakes up a few times a night and needs attention, and putting him down can take an hour or more which WHEE FUN! Sometimes I think “FUCK IT” because he’d gotten to a point, sleeping in our bed, where he’d go down in just a few minutes and I hate a drawn out bedtime ritual (which, just throwing this out there, is the worst when Nesko does it because that means Nesko is home, and Niko wants to party with him instead of sleep).

Sometimes Niko wakes up early in the morning and gets into bed with us/me and I don’t really care. He snoozes a bit longer, I get to continue lying in bed with no demands on me, whatever. Usually Nesko is already out of bed and getting ready for or already left for work. Then, the other day, Niko woke up and got into bed with us at 5:00 am after a very long and protracted falling asleep and also woke up several times during the night and Nesko and I were both too tired to put him back to bed. I’d forgotten just how much I hate sleeping with a toddler. He rolled around like a rotisserie toddler. He kicked me repeatedly, in the “drumming his heels on me” way. He got his fingers tangled in my hair and yanked it while thrashing around. He pushed at me. He tried to burrow his head inside of me. He stuck his feet under me. WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS.

It really strengthened my resolve to not let him into bed with us unless it’s morning and we’re just chillin’, even when he cries and says he’s lonely, even when he begs us to sleep with him “just a little bit” and pats his pillow and says we can lie down “on this spot right here.” Fffffffffffffffffff. NO MORE.

Does that sound cruel? He’s actually pretty good about sleeping by himself, especially at nap time. Nap time is usually not a struggle at all. In fact, he’ll finish eating lunch and say he’s ready to sleep now, and we calmly do our business and read two stories and I tuck him in and make sure he has his water and his objects of affection (Canada the moose, Carl the elephant, Other Carl the other elephant, Medo the panda bear (“medo” is how you say “bear” ins Srpski, so he has a bear named bear), Emily the Steam Engine and her Tender, his Special Blue Blanket) and give him some hugs and kisses and that’s it. He sacks out for 2-5 hours and while I can’t get anything done in the kitchen, I can pick up the living room or the dining room or work on lesson plans for the student I tutor or just sit on my butt and surf the net. You know. Whatever.

The little bits of regressing he’d been doing (crawling, and referring to himself as “a crawling baby!”, needing every single pacifier in the entire house in bed with him, asking for a bottle– something he gave up when he was 13 months old, with no fight at all) are easing off, although he still wants his pacifier ALL THE TIME when we’d already weaned him during the day, and he’s chewing on EVERYTHING including his fingers/hands (is he teething? HE HAS ALL HIS TEETH. Any teeth coming in are UNWANTED EXTRAS).

And at night, I stretch out in the middle of the bed (not the edge of it) and curl up with my husband and nobody kicks me or punches me. It is GLORIOUS.

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I don’t even know how long Niko’s been sleeping in his own bed at this point. Two weeks? I think it’s something like two weeks. Or three? I have no idea. Part of this is because when he wakes up at night he is all OH GOD FREAK OUT I AM ALL ALONE OH HELP ME THERE IS A TIGER and someone has to go in and settle him down again which is fast, but internets?

I have insomnia.

I have a hard time getting to sleep.

I have a hard time staying asleep.

When a panicky toddler wakes me up at 2am because his pacifier fell out of his mouth and is wedged between his neck and his shoulder and he cannot FIND it and he NEEDS IT and I have to get out of my nice warm soft bed and walk across the creakiest floor in the world and come fully awake? I’m up for at least an hour after that. And at his peak of waking, he wakes up 4-5 times a night. That’s kind of eased off as he’s gotten more used to sleeping by himself but I? Am tired. So tired. It’s a little like having an infant again, only I’m not fumbling with formula in the darkness.

Thank God.

So on the one hand, I can sprawl out in bed and nobody is scratching me or kicking me or shoving me onto the floor; on the other hand I’m exhausted from waking up all the time.

Although that’s getting better!

What’s not getting better is some of Niko’s behavior is regressing. When we initially weaned him off daytime pacifier use he panicked and started clinging to his pacifiers, sleeping with one in his mouth and one (or more) in each hand. He’s started doing that again. He’s jumping on the furniture again, getting into the bread flour and dumping it on the floor again, scrubbing the sink drain with my tooth brush, and other behaviors that seriously we halted these behaviors months ago WHAT IS GOING ON. Fear and insecurity is what’s going on, also possibly he’s cutting his third molars. No, not his third YEAR molars, he’s got what looks like an additional (third) set of molars pricking through his gums.

I am not entirely surprised by this because while Niko seems to have a normal sized mouth and normal sized teeth (I have a small mouth and large teeth) he seems to have my cyclone crooked teeth, including a bunch of teeth just like slanting sideways, like what is even up with that, is your head crooked or something? So he’s got my dental drama going on, apparently including extra teeth. Although  mine were premolars, not molars. Haha! Fun.

ANYWAY. Before you get all jellus on me because my toddler sleeps in his own bed, making him a high achieving prince among toddlers, let me tell you our other problem. Namely, his room is DIRECTLY off the kitchen, and he sleeps with the door open. Which means when he’s napping (for a 2-4 hour chunk of time a day) or asleep (and I put him down at 7:30) I have to curtail my kitchen activities. In other words, the only time of day I am toddler free, I can’t do my toddler-free chores like wash dishes or make bread or make noise in the kitchen because Niko will take that as his cue to strike up a conversation and delay sleeping.

We’re considering swapping his bedroom with what is now the office. The office flanks the living room, which  means if we wanted to watch tv after he went to sleep we’d have to keep the volume down LOW; and it means if we had guests we’d have to provide everyone will ball gags to shut them up. However, we also want to carve out a mini pantry that would butt into his room (the kitchen has VERY little storage space OH GOD IT IS TERRIBLE) (but not the worst kitchen I’ve had; that one had no counters other than a drain board on the side of the sink, and you couldn’t open the fridge door all the way OR the oven door all the way AND the oven was plugged in with an extension cord. That kitchen had a pantry that was sweet as hell, though.) and if that room was an office instead of our precious baby boy’s bedroom I’d feel way less guilty about hogging space for my cookbooks, microwave, and huge bins of flour.

Do I even need to stay that swapping an office with two computers and a bunch of books and papers and general junk and guitar stuff with a toddler’s room is a lot of work?

Because it is.

On the other hand, his closet is extra deep, so we could put shelves all along the back for storage AND hang coats in front, because this apartment? Does not have a coat closet (or a linen closet or a pantry or a broom closet). There’s a lot of stuff I love about our vintage (1930s) Chicago 2-flat. Lack of storage is a problem, though.

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