Skip to main content

My defenses don't fly anymore

Willow and I were playing with Mr. Potato Head in the bonus room when the drier downstairs kicked off and the alarm beeped.
Willow chimed, "WazZat?"
"That's the laundry," I responded. "Do you want to go down with me and do the laundry?"
Willow shook her head no.
I stepped over the barriers at the top of the stairs (a large kitchen set and a heavy tote filled with baseball cards, a combo that has kept Willow penned upstairs for months now because a baby gate doesn't fit) then looked back and asked again, "Willow, do you want to help with the laundry?"
Again she shook her head no.
"OK, I'll be right back."
Willow continued playing with Mr. Potato Head, and I hopped down the 10 or so steps to the main floor of the house.
As I emptied the drier and folded the towels, rags and underwear, I heard Willow chirping playfully up in the bonus room.
A couple of minutes passed, and I neared the end of the folding job, grabbing two socks to wrap together.
Willow walked up to the drier and peered inside.
"I'm finished, baby girl," I said, then I stopped folding the socks and looked down at Willow then around the corner, through the kitchen, where Willow obviously had come from.
My brain locked.
"Where did you come from?"
Willow didn't answer, and seeing I had finished the laundry, she turned and headed back toward the bonus room. I followed, curious to see how she managed to get down the stairs.
My impenetrable fortress wall remained, unmoved, at the top of the steps.
I guess she scaled it.
Or learned to fly.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Adding a splash to the winter gray

Willow, Mommy and I went to the Y's pool on Sunday to take advantage of our membership and to do something summery in this dreary and cold weather. We had so much fun swimming and splashing, Willow and I went back on Tuesday. On Sunday, surprisingly, nobody else was at the pool, and the lifeguard seemed resigned to having to sit boringly in her stand. I have no problem with having an entire pool and a lifeguard all to myself, but, again, I was surprised nobody else was there, except for a few exercisers coming and going to use the steam room and the sauna (and a couple of guys hopped in the whirlpool for a few minutes). When Willow and I went on Tuesday, several people were in the pool, but they quickly scattered when the tot and I entered the pool. Maybe their time in the pool had come to a planned end. Maybe they didn't want to be in the water with someone who might pee or poop at any moment. After the initial scattering a couple of men came into the pool area and swam qui...

Among chaos, peace

I want to show you two pictures, but a little later. First I want to introduce you to chaos (or at least what I consider to be chaos) via a handy, dandy list: I am sitting at a laptop, pounding out a blog's letters as quickly as I can think of them. The laptop is only three months old, yet some of the keys stick sometimes. These sticky keys are the ghostly reminders that a toddler's sticky fingers have been pounding on them. Four loads of laundry lie in various states of "unfinish." One load is wet. One load is wrinkling. Two loads await their spins. A fifth load already has been tucked away in drawers, cabinets and closets (then untucked by a toddler then tucked again by me). Cups, plates and bowls hang for dear life to a hastily stacked pile of dirty dishes in the sink while a clean set of dishes sits in the dishwasher. A pile of pictures and postcards blanket the floor beside the desk in the guest room. This was the work of the sticky fingers that pounded on...

Willow wonders why, and why, and why, and why

Willow has started asking the dreaded "why?". She has been repeating the question over and over and over again for the past day or two, so I won't write about it just yet. "Why?" you ask. Because I don't think I'm an expert on the topic just yet. "Why?" you ask again. It has been only a day or two. "Why?" STOP IT! Anyway, before Willow started asking why, she led up to it by repeating other questions, such as, "Where is my purse?" I don't know. "Where is my purse?" I don't know; we'll look for it. "Where is my purse?" I'm looking for it now; we'll find it. And so on and so forth. I read someplace a parent's best response to repeated questions is to answer as well as you can for the first two or three questions then state, "I already told you the answer. I'm not answering again." Then you ignore the question if it keeps coming. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it do...