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Playdate FAIL.

Last Friday I was super-excited to take my kids on a playdate with my friends Andrea and Bethany. (You can click their names to read about the very interesting playdates I’ve had with them before.) I was super-excited because I hadn’t seen either of them in approximately FOREVER (before Christmas I think) and I was feeling like a hermit after my kids being sick two weeks in a row. So, we planned to meet at Andrea’s son’s preschool because they have a really cool playland there (see exhibit A) and after preschool you can totally stay & play for awhile. And invite your friends to do so as well! And bring their LUNCHES! It’s pretty much amazing.

Exhibit A: Playland at Mitchell’s preschool

We ate our lunch in the eating area outside the playland…that is until Sophie caught a glimpse of the playland (I had strategically sat her with her back to it but dangit she had the audacity to turn around- GRR!) and began screaming and fussing and trying to get down. After about three minutes of this, I decided to stop torturing all the other people in the lunch area and just give up on eating and take my kids to the playland. So I left Beth and Andrea & their kids in the lunch area and took my two into play heaven.

After a couple of minutes, my friends and their kids joined us. My kids were already having a grand time in the playland, and I was trying to converse with my friends while being very nervous that, due to my daughter’s tempestuous personality, I was going to end up here –

Exhibit B:

– with my big ol’ adult body stuffed into a child-sized space trying to get Sophie to come down because she was either a) having so much fun that she never wanted to leave or b) super-pissed about God-knows-what.

Fortunately, all seemed to be going well. Sophie crawled around up in playland like all the big kids and had a great time watching them run and play all around her. So, I relaxed and chatted with Andrea for awhile.

Until I realized Sophie was about to go down this slide:

Exhibit C:

Without actually realizing what she was about to do.

D’oh!

I jumped up and ran over to the slide and caught her as she came down. “Yay Sophie!” I clapped her and tried to convince her that what she had just done was fun and exciting instead of tragic. She was sadly, unmoved by my passion and was just pretty peeved that the slide had tricked her. After a couple of seconds of comfort, however, she decided to go play some more. With a sigh of relief, I returned to my seat and tried once again to talk to Beth and Andrea.

This reprieve lasted just a few minutes, before I heard the unmistakable grating fuss of an angry Sophie, who of course was located approximately here in the playland:

Desperate to avoid a humiliation-and-claustrophobia cocktail, I grabbed Joshua from another area of the playland. “Joshua, can you go up there and see if you can help Sophie? Hurry!” I admonished him. After spending way too long explaining to his friends that he would be right back, Joshua headed into the belly of the playland to see what was wrong with his sister. I watched as he sweetly bargained with her, but she would not be reasoned with. He came back down unsuccessful. “Mommy I think Sophie wants to come down but she wouldn’t let me help her.”

Crap.

I thanked my little helper and tried to come to terms with my fate. I was going in.

I squeezed my un-child-sized rear (well maybe it’s the size of a small child. heh.) up into the narrow ENCLOSED stairway and climbed my way up the TUBE that would lead me to my daughter. Finally, I got up on the platform where there was at least space and daylight. Sophie was glad to see me, but sadly my presence didn’t solve whatever problem she was having. She clung to me and cried forlornly.

“Sophie, do you wanna get down?”

“Noooo!” she howled

“Do you wanna play?”

“Nooooooo!!”

“Do you wanna go down the slide?”

“NOOOOOOOOO!”

I couldn’t make her happy, so I decided we were both getting out of there. Unfortunately, due to the size of my aforementioned rear, it was not going to be possible to go out the way I came in the playland’s bowels.

We were going to have to do down the slide.

(Just like Playgroups are no place for children. Which is an excellent blog you should totally go read. But I digress.)

I grabbed Soph and scooted (on my BUTT) towards the slide. Once she realized where we were headed, she started to put up a fight. But I was undeterred. And so was she. When we got to the mouth of the slide, she tried to brace herself against the sides with her arms, so I had to give her a strait-jacket bear hug as we zoomed down the red static-electricity-generator-of-fun. When we emerged, I was frustrated and Sophie was tee-icked. I hustled her over to my seat on the bench and attempted to comfort her, but being as I didn’t even have the slightest clue what set her off in the first place, I was less than successful. After three or four minutes of this, I decided to stop torturing my friends and called it a day. I grabbed Joshua, who was surprisingly gracious about the situation, (hey one out of two ain’t bad) and bade my friends a sad farewell.

When we got in the car, I looked at the clock. We’d made it a whole 52 minutes.

Sigh. Well, it was a valiant effort. But the playdate wasn’t much fun for mommy. She’d prefer to have one with her friends and without her kids!

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Guest Post: Baby-Proofing Your Home

Today we are bringing you a guest post from Suzanne, one of the experts at CSNbaby.com.

Tips for Baby-Proofing Your Home

Day in and day out we try our hardest to make our home safe and comfortable for our family. While installing an alarm system or putting a scary guard dog out in your front lawn may ward off danger from the outside, the scarier situations lie inside our house. Babies are explorative and once you couple that type of personality with their tiny size, they can get can pretty much anywhere – which is why it’s important to highlight some general ways in which we can properly baby-proof our home.

Despite the fact that your baby’s crib is where they rest peacefully, this area of the nursery can be one of the most dangerous areas for your child if it hasn’t been properly assembled. As much as we think it’s a good idea to accept hand-me-down baby furniture to save on money, its best not to use antique furniture that doesn’t meet the crib manufacturing standards in cribs built in 1992 or later. Also, used cribs can be broken or missing small parts that could critically affect the overall construction. Be sure that the headboard or footboard doesn’t include decorative cutouts that your baby can get tangled in or tall corner posts that children can grab hold of and crawl on.

When you’re arranging the floor plan of your baby’s nursery, place cribs, changing tables, and rockers away from hanging drapery and blind cords to prevent entanglement or dissembled window treatments. The inner cords of blinds also pose a risk so simply removing the hanging cords is not enough. Since the nursery is a convenient place to store toys and stuffed animals, a wooden toy box makes organization a snap. With that in mind, avoid using storage units that include a heavy, hinged lid that can create a dangerous trap for young children. Mount bookshelves to the wall to prevent the structure from tipping over if tampered with and place a TV within a tall cabinet or on top of a high roll-out shelf.

If there is a specific section you would like to keep little ones out of, adjustable baby gates installed between kitchen islands or cabinets are an easy solution as long as you don’t mind hopping over them every now and then. These are absolutely crucial for the top and bottom of staircases in any part of the home that your child has access to.

If you’ve ever been around children in the kitchen, you’d understand how important it is to baby-proof this area of the home. Whether you’re making a quick snack or a gourmet family meal, young kids always want to see what’s happening on the counters, what’s inside the fridge, and what sounds each pot and pan can make. The first thing to check for is low sharp edges or corners that toddlers can reach or bump up against. Installing safety locks on all cabinets, pantries, and liquor cabinets that contain harmful cleaning products, food, or small objects will keep your child safe during their exploration. It’s best to move dangerous products to the top shelves to ensure that babies have no chance of getting their little hands on them. Also, a dishwasher full of clean or dirty utensils is tempting to a child – make sure to keep your dishwasher door closed and fastened tightly anytime you aren’t loading or unloading it so your child doesn’t have access to sharp forks and knives.

In all areas of the house, make sure low electrical outlets are covered. Once your child reaches a toddler age where they can climb, the dining room or kitchen table will no longer be a safe place to store dangerous items like scissors or breakables like your favorite flower vase.

What are some of your favorite baby-proofing tips and hacks? Is there anything you learned the hard way?

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Dirty Ducks and Foul-Mouthed Fish

My four-year-old son is really into knock-knock jokes, and consequently, so is my two-year-old daughter. She has no idea what she’s saying or what they mean, but she thinks she’s hysterical. So the other night, while I was out running errands, my husband gave the kids fish sticks for dinner and decided to turn the fish sticks into a knock-knock joke.

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Fish!
Fish who?
Fish for dinner! Eat your fish sticks!

Hilarious, right? Well, my little Sophie thought it was hilarious, and kept telling it over and over, in her typical loud exuberance. Only when she tells, it, it sounds like this:

Knock, knock.
(who’s there?)
B*TCH!
(fish who?)
ha ha ha ha B*TCH! ha ha ha ha!

Yeah. As hard as we tried to get her to pronounce the “f” and the “sh” sounds, it just keeps coming out “B*TCH!” Sadly, there are few things cuter than a cutie-pie of a two-year-old screaming “B*TCH” and laughing about it. Once again, Bobby and I were in hysterics. We even got it on video. Yes, we are awesome parents! Of course Sophie felt the need to tell her new joke over and over at our house church Sunday night, so Bobby and I had some ‘splaining to do. Soph really raised some eyebrows!

Sophie’s new favorite epithet reminds me of the time Emily and I took Kate and Joshua to the Indy Children’s museum. The whole place is awesome, but as they were 21 and 23 months old at the time, respectively, we spent most of our time in the really amazing toddler area they have there. The kids especially liked the water play area with lots of boats and rubber ducks.

Kate, being the bright, verbal toddler that she was, liked picking the ducks up and saying “QUACK QUACK QUACK!”

Only it didn’t sound like “quack”. It sounded like what quack would sound like if you took out the “a” and put an “f” where the “q” is.

That’s right, Kate was cussing out the ducks! A panicked Emily kept saying, “Kate, can you say QUACK!?” To which Kate would reply, “F***, F***, F***!”

IT. WAS. AWESOME.

Because, as sad as this is, there are few things cuter than a cutie-pie-of-a-21-month old cussing out some rubber duckies.

And it also makes one very popular with the other parents in the water play area!

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