A few weeks ago my sister and her 10 month old daughter came over for a visit. Within the first 20 minutes my entire house was on the kitchen floor. I had a bit of a wake up call – in less than a year I’m going to have one of these opening drawers, cupboards and it’ll be tall enough to stand at the coffee table and knock everything off of it.

And I thought I had put everything away before they came over, knowing that my neice is very curious. Nope, she found everything – things I had even forgotten I owned. So then we put her in the baby’s room, where toys and fun colored books and non-threatening objects reside in our house … but, oops, we still haven’t gotten heat vents put back on the wall – and oh, that fake tree in the corner with the fake grass thats so easy to pull out and play with, yea that was visible. And did I forget the crib wasn’t entirely put together correctly, with a few long objects poking out of it … ehuh, well – she found those too. And the closet doors we have yet to put back on the hangers – with all the fun bags of things Aunt Jodi thought she could hide in the baby’s room. And the outlets – we have SO MANY outlets.

Needless to say that after they left I rearranged my entire kitchen, there are no bowls sitting out on reachable shelves, the baskets that are in reach have baby tupperware and bibs and towls only in them, not the can opener, pizza slicer and scissors. I put those in a drawer – and then I went out and bought the do-hickeys that keep every kid and some adults from opening cupboards.

All the fun “decorations” I had sitting on books shelves or the coffee table, my crocheting needles and yarn – yea they all either went into hiding for the next ten years, the garage sale box or in the drawers in our bedroom – will also be lockable.

The heat vent situation, haven’t taken care of that yet – after 2 trips to Lowes and one to Menards, we have yet to bring the right size home to fit our vents … so we’re working on that.

And I’m sure the surprises have just begun. We have stairs – without carpet or padding of any sort, and although we registered for a gate or two, there’s also a door to the stairs, which will have to be perpetually open for the gate to be in place or there will be alot of distracting baby schaap while parent schaap races to open and close the door, without making it obvious and then hurrying to do whatever it is that needs to be done, all the while hoping other schaap parent is distracting baby from noticing schaap parent A isn’t missing.

My life just got complicated.