Barnabas Monkeypants

Kristen and Henry have abandoned me…

For the weekend.

Off they flew this morning, headed to visit her brother in New York. And I’ll sit at home, alone, suffering (I’m getting the cold that both Henry and Kristen recently had), wallowing in my own self pity.

This is a good look for me. I recommend it to others as well.

Being alone, I’ll try and do some writing, some cleaning, and some household chores (changing various light bulbs, hanging pictures), but I’ll also be doing (or rather thinking about doing) some babyproofing.

Now that Henry is upwardly mobile (or mobile in an up position), he’ll likely get into more things than he’s already been getting into. (I’m referring, of course, to knife drawers, medicine cabinets, my chemistry set, and the meth lab we’ve set up in the guest bathroom.)

But I’m also hesitant to go overboard with it. Yes, Henry’s standing and can pull things down and break them, but we have so few breakable things (or at least things that haven’t already been broken by the cats) and the objects he tends to pull off of tables are magazines and books — something with a bit of a flexibility.

We’ve already moved sharp and potentially injurious things from bottom drawers, the bookshelves are so heavy and full of books (and sturdy) that until Henry weighs 140 lbs or manifests those super powers I’ve been dreaming of, they’re not going anywhere, and the stereo whose dials and knobs he loves to fiddle with is unplugged (and sadly unused).

I really have no urge to drill things into the side of the cabinets or put plastic gates anywhere. Our place is on one floor, so there are no stairs that he can fall down. And other than a trying to keep him out of the litter box, I can’t think of any room whose door is usually open that we’d mind him stumbling into.

There has to be some sort of happy medium between keeping your child safe from possible injury at home at all costs (wrapping him in bubble wrap? a helmet, perhaps) and ignoring him and letting him poke his fingers willy nilly into any light socket.

Of course, I’ll likely end up in bed (moaning, naturally) all weekend and not get to any of the chores I’ve listed to myself, leaving the house a veritable death trap to all the toddlers who enter through its doors. Lead-paint covered doors, probably.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Barnabas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.