Friday, November 29, 2013

Foiling the Boy

Those who have been in my home have no doubt noticed that it is not an interior decorator's dream.

Our home has off white walls, everywhere.

Our kitchen is functional, not gorgeous.

There are boxes of toys everywhere.

It looks like what it is, a house with a bunch of children.

In fact, the older I get (and the more children I have) the more extreme I get about not wanting extra "stuff".  I don't like knick knacks, and if it wasn't for Kevin I think our walls would be entirely bare.  He does like some artwork so we have items on our walls.

But you know, with kids...life is complicated. Especially with a toddler who is into EVERYTHING.

I'm going to share a few things about keeping our home in decent shape with 10 people in the family, and 9 of them home most of the time.

One important job of mine is to Foil the Boy, the boy being our toddler Daniel.

 
This is, of course, a bookcase.  We have many bookcases. We have many, many books. I try not to be a book hoarder but I do love books.
 
There comes a time in the life of every little child when the desire to pull books off of bookcases becomes almost irresistible.  In my younger mothering days (when I had fewer children) I worked on training the children to NOT pull books off the bookcases and leave the books strewn everywhere. But reality is, I'm super busy and if I can keep Daniel safe, I often don't have time to address his messy propensities. 
 
The solution is shown above, though it may be subtle. The lower 3 shelves of books are totally jammed to the point that Daniel can't pull books out. 
 
And it is working.  I did that 2 days ago, and he hasn't removed one book from that bookcase since!
 
Now there is a disadvantage -- namely, it is difficult for ANYONE to remove a book and the point of having books is that we can read them. But this is just a season. I hope he'll get discouraged and give up on trying to remove books.  Then we can remove a book or 2 from each shelf, and normal people can get easily to the books again.
 
 
 
And here is another solution to a bad habit of Daniel's.  This switch is on a wall next to a raised step next to our fireplace. Therefore, Daniel can climb on the step, climb into the library box next to the switch, and turn the light on.  And off.  And on.  And off.  And on.  And off. 
 
You get the picture. It is annoying. I tried training him to just leave it alone but I was too busy to always catch him at it.  So I taped it down. He is foiled.  And again, I hope this will just be temporary and he'll give up on the switch soon.  (I taped it down 2 weeks ago and he tried again yesterday, so he hasn't forgotten entirely.)
 
Tune back for later episodes of Foiling the Boy.

1 comment:

Jolene said...

We have to do the same sort of things with Donovan. He's so active and climbs everything!