No door is closed to you

My wonderful husband has taught our son to open doors with knobs. Heath says he'd rather have Ben know how to do something and tell him not to, than not have him know how. That's easy to say when he's not the one in the house all day telling Ben not to do it.

It backfired deliciously, though. Last Friday Heath stayed home from work sick. While I was in the shower Ben took it upon himself to open our bedroom door and wake up Daddy! I must admit I felt some schadenfreude at that.

So far Ben has been very responsible with the knowledge. He's only opened the back door when we're leaving. But it worries me. We live on a fairly busy street and now it would be very easy for him to get outside and run down the driveway. Given his personality it seems unlikely he would do that, at least right now. He still has separation anxiety, obviously from Heath but from me, too, when I'm the only parent available. Even in the house he doesn't like to be in different rooms for too long. So I don't see him running outside by himself for a while, but still... The possibility is there.

The one decent point Heath had was that if I ever lock myself out of the house while Ben's still inside, he could let me back in. That has the potential to come in handy. As well as this morning when I had to wake up Heath for work. I sent Ben upstairs to wake him while I cleaned up the remains of breakfast. That was nice. But the second I find Ben outside by himself I'll be cursing Heath's name. :)

Child labor laws aren't applicable when it's your own child, right?

Ben helps around the house by doing the following (seriously):

• Putting dirty utensils into the basket in the dishwasher (his 1 Tru Luv 4eva)
  
• Handing me clean utensils (and sometimes plates and bowls) from the dishwasher to put away
• Helping me pull laundry out of the dryer
• Handing me clean clothes to fold
• Helping us clean up his toys before bed time

Who knew a 16 month old could help so much? Okay, most of the time he actually slows down the process, but he does keep me from having to bend down. Plus, then I can use precious nap time to do more important things like update my blog and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Meet the Designer

Remember my post about Baby Chic? Here's the designer at work:

Surveying the top shelf of the changing table and contemplating his next move.

Interesting choice to knock over the diaper can, but who can question a master?

A nice touch to pull clothes out of the hamper.

Patiently ruminating on the perfect placement of dirty shorts.

Moving on to the book shelf.

Obviously those stuffed animals are much too high.

Extreme Home Makeover: Infant Edition

I've recently learned about a new design aesthetic. It's called Baby Chic. It seems simple in its application, but there are many nuances not obvious to the average person. The main concept is that shelves, tables, really any flat surface should be as bare as possible. The floor is where things belong. Coasters, diapers, rags, Cheerios, cups, shoes, Kleenex, books, etc. Nothing belongs up high where it can't be reached. Should one make the mistake of trying to rearrange things back onto the shelves, a Baby Chic enthusiast will scold that person for her "in the box" thinking and energetically return them to their rightful place on the floor. As for things already on the floor - lamps, hat racks, laundry baskets - they cannot remain upright. They must be tipped over and dumped out.

It is possible to give your house a Baby Chic makeover yourself, but to really experience the joy of it you need a trained professional. However, getting a full-time trained professional is a costly, time consuming and painful process, so you're probably better off just borrowing one for the weekend. You can borrow ours! We'll go to a movie.

That'll come in handy

It took a few weeks, but Ben's finally crawling like a normal child. I think he had to do a cost-benefit analysis before he really took off. "Crawling takes a lot of energy, but it does allow me to get to those drawers, open them up and pull out all the video games."

So this morning when I was using the Swiffer, Ben decided it was very interesting and started crawling after it. He followed the Swiffer through three rooms before it got boring. I think this is an interest I'll encourage. My friend Irene likes to tell about her son Isaac and his love of the Swiffer. He pushes it around the house and eventually she decided to put a dusting cloth on the bottom. Hey, if he's having fun what's the harm if a little cleaning happens along the way? People used to have children so they'd have more fieldhands. Quibbles about child labor be damned! Once Ben's old enough, he'll join the Swiffer army. It's not like I'm asking him to pick crops.

The many adventures of Ben

Greeting visitors, pantsless.

Modeling on our new rug.

Drinking all on his own.

Discovering the wonders of kitchen utensils.

Watching a bird eat nectar on Jeff's arm.

Oh, what a night!

All three of us were up at 1:00am last night. In a surprising role reversal, it was we who woke up Ben. Our carbon monoxide detector went off. Nothing like high pitched screeching to bolt you out of bed in the middle of the night. Luckily the nice fire fighters determined that the battery was just low and there was not, in fact, any gas in the house that shouldn't be there (resisting... Heath... fart... joke...).

Obviously Ben knew something was up, since we're not in the habit of waking him at 1:00am and spending 30 minutes hanging out in the car. While the fire fighters were doing their thing he was calm, but once they were gone and we tried to get him back to sleep, he was freaked out. I read him a story and he was frantically looking around, trying to figure out what happened. Then he started crying and lunged for Heath, so he gave Ben a bottle and sat with him for a while. We thought he was asleep, but he started crying again, so I rocked him until he finally fell asleep at 3:00am. I didn't get back to sleep for another 30-45 minutes after that.

So it was a tough night, but I'm proud of the way we handled it. We didn't freak out, Heath called 911, I gathered Ben and remembered to bring my cell phone and keys outside. I embraced the possibility that we might have to go somewhere else for the night. We were cool under pressure and it all seemed very parental.

It's all about the sump pumps, baby!

Remember that day about a month ago which included a very irate baby and a flooded basement? Well, I'm sure we'll have an irate baby again, but we won't have a flooded basement again! Last week we had our basement waterproofed. Though hearing them jack hammer the concrete wasn't too pleasant, they got it done in one day, instead of the projected two, and now we have a drainage system and a sump pump!! Isn't it strange the things that make you use multiple exclamation points when you're an adult? It used to be cute boys, now it's sump pumps.

This morning electricians came and gave us a new outlet in the basement for the sump pump and a couple extras just for fun. Which means that we are done having workmen in the house for a while! Yea! It also means we just have to wait for the new concrete to set and then we can put everything back in the basement and really get to organizing it. It'll be so nice to actually be able to use the basement as a storage space and not worry about everything being destroyed.

Now we just need to get to the other 3,847 things we want to do and the house will be perfect.

Bad days are only days that are bad

Wednesday was one of Those days.

It actually started off well. Ben only woke up once during the night and cried for maybe a minute before going back to sleep on his own. Then I woke up at 6:30am to the sounds of a baby laughing. I don't think there's any better way to wake up.

I changed Ben's diaper, we went downstairs and I fed him a bottle. Then we were going to head back upstairs to wake Heath when I noticed the first indications of the day ahead. There were little white cat prints in a neat line through the entire foyer and into the kitchen. At first I was confused, because the cats don't normally leave prints like that everywhere they go. Then the horror dawned on me: They only leave prints like that when they've stepped in water and then stepped in their litter box.

Which is in the basement.

I carried Ben downstairs and we discovered that the rainstorm the night before had flooded the basement. Again. At first it didn't look too bad, but upon closer inspection a little while later, it was quite a lot of water. Not the record, though. That was on my birthday, when Ben was 2 weeks old. The entire basement was covered in at least 1/4 inch of water. Happy birthday to me.

So, Heath went into work late and we started our Wednesday morning throwing out cardboard boxes and suctioning water off the basement floor. It really gets the blood pumping. The irony is that we already had someone coming that night to talk about waterproofing.

Ben and I spent the afternoon at the Galleria with the moms group, which was fun and managed to take my mind off the basement for a while. Then we came home and I knew I'd have to clean up more water, because it was raining while we were at the mall. So I spent another 30 minutes vacuuming up water, afraid I'd be electrocuted, because I couldn't manage to keep the cord for the wet/dry vac out of the pools.

I knew I was racing against the clock because the waterproofing guy was going to be here at 5pm, and in my experience salesmen like that are usually early. Then, OF COURSE, just to make the day that much more pleasant, Ben woke up only 45 minutes into his nap. At a time when he usually sleeps for an hour and a half. And he woke up extremely grumpy. I should've expected it. The boy has a sixth sense. Most of the time he's pretty content and takes his naps fairly easily. But if there's ever a time I'm counting on him to sleep or to be content, he most definitely won't be.

I tried to get him back to sleep, with no success, and then the waterproofing guy showed up. Ben was okay while I was holding him so I thought maybe he'd be merciful and lay on his playmat while I talked to the guy. What was I THINKING?! Not only did he start crying, but he started screaming like I was stabbing him to death, rather than just not touching him anymore. Luckily the guy went into the basement and about 2 seconds later Heath got home.

After some rocking and singing I thought Ben might fall asleep, but I am a foolish Mommy. So instead of having an adult conversation about the state of my home I had to entertain a grumpy 5 month old who would've normally been sleeping.

Ben was grouchy all evening and by the time he went to bed I was reduced to drinking Bacardi Silver Raz and eating raw cookie dough. It was that kind of a day. And it had started out so well. Though, yesterday started off with Ben leaning over and spitting up all over my crotch, soaking both my pants and my underwear, and it wasn't such a bad day. So you just never know.