I’m handing the blog over today to the real star of the show, Miss C.
OH HI. Why don’t you just come in and I’ll give you a tour of my awesomely dangerous home. I freaking love it here. Would you believe that this front hallway used to be clear of all debris? That’s what my parents tell me. They said that before I was born, they managed to keep our apartment nice and tidy. LOOOOOOOL.
Here we have my parents’ bookshelf in their room. It came into existence when they were in grad school and in need of cheap shelves from Ikea. I personally LOVE to pull off every single item from the bottom shelf, and I’m really looking forward to getting tall enough to pull the thing down entirely.
One of my personal favorite pastimes is going after the cords to the router next to the bookcase. Did you know they are simply DELISH and completely fascinating?
Not to outdo the bookshelf in my parents’ room, I also have a bookshelf in my own room. My utterly genius mother decided before I was born that it would be just fabulous to outfit my nursery with a bookcase that nearly reaches the ceiling and then discard the anchor brackets. Sure, I laugh at this, but it’s only a coping mechanism since I am related to this woman and likely inherited her idiocy. And yes those are ceramic figurines on my shelf. I can’t wait to destroy them.
Here I am enjoying one of my favorite toys in the entire apartment: a white tag. Screw the boxes that toys come in. The most underappreciated plaything in the world is a tag. I just can’t get enough of them. The more expensive item they’re attached to is, the better. I may be under a year old, but irony is not lost on me.
Tags are fine, but do you know what else is? Plungers! And toilet brushes! They are truly great and I love to go after them and attempt to eat them. My mom has thwarted all my attempts to get ahold of them, but I am hatching a plan to go after them in the night and have my way with them. Hepatitis, here I come!
My poor mom. She used to have a love affair with bric-a-brac. More like, bric-a-crap, AMIRITE? Yeah, so no more “Happy Harvest.” More like “Hap Harvey.” Sounds kind of like a crappy burger chain, no?
She also seems to think that she can manage to keep our apartment seasonally current by decorating for upcoming holidays. I’m all for this because it just means there’s more crap for me to get into. Fake spider webs are ideal for ingesting.
Ever since I learned to move around on my own, the world has been so much more entertaining. These blinds are pretty great. They are delicious, too.
I’m new to this whole blogging thing, so I asked my mom how I should end this post. She said that it’s always good to end with a witty saying or a moral to the story. I’m thinking, no. Instead, here’s an adorable picture of me at a hotel a couple weeks ago. I think that wraps it up well.
The End.
P.S. Miss C will not be answering the comments to this post; I will. She’s already gone mad with power by having control over this post. Little does she know that the humbling experience of her first Halloween costume is on the horizon.
The Waiting 
At two, these are all still some of K’s favorite things.
What is the deal?! I think if I tell her to just go ahead and ingest all the most dangerous things in the house, she will stop caring about them. Reverse psychology and all.
I remember those days vividly! It doesn’t really get better as they get older. Your house gets jacked in a different way. Basically, you won’t have a nice house until Miss C goes to college, but then you’ll miss her so much you won’t care about how cute your house is. Man, I’m a Negative Nelly this morning, eh?
Nah, I’d call you more of a Realistic Rita.
I’m surprised she’s not on Le Clown’s blog roll yet. Haha!
Okay, Emily, this was another hilarious post! This looks like our set up when we had Lily. The best thing I can say is that having your baby run the gauntlet each day will prepare her for life. She’ll be all the more sturdy, ready for germs and hard knocks – especially if the book case falls on top of her. Let me also add that with each successive child things get even more lax. Mark my words, you’ll be letting baby #2 juggle steak knives! Haha!
Also, is it me or could Miss C have a lucrative career doing commercials and print ads? What a GORGEOUS baby!!! If you need an agent, I’m your gal.
It’s only a matter of time before I throw in the towel completely and sign her up to be in Cirque Du Soleil. The upside of her new-found curiosity and mobility is that she can finally entertain herself without me for longer stretches. As much as I *enjoyed* having her attached at my hip (and chest) for the first six months of her life, it’s great to finally be able to give my back a rest.
Lisa, you are so sweet for saying that! We obviously think she’s beautiful, but it’s nice to hear that we are not just doting parents. She is a looker, but her personality is so adorable too. ;)
The literal version of MTV Cribs.
Like Grippy said, your girl is adorable!
All the celebs are all completely jealous of my life. It’s so swank. Thanks, Guap!
Oh God, you mean the baby isn’t going to stay immobile on his play mat forever?
Haha, nope. Oh how far away those days are now. And what’s scary is that they were only a few months ago. Hang on!
My recommendation for Christmas is to put a little tree on a table. Sometimes the battles are not worth fighting! Although I usually try.
Oh no. The tree… Sadly, she’s right. Unless you want to spend all day reprimanding C… which I’m sure you don’t.
You’re right, I don’t. “No” makes me sound more dictatorial than I want to be. I am unable to say it without sounding like a Nazi.
It’s not that. Literally, my kids (as toddlers) would remove and play with the cars ALL DAY. So, it’s not just reprimanding your baby. It’s saying the same thing 200 times a day for several weeks.
By the end though, you pretend not to notice. And then you take the tree down on December 26th.
We had a child care expert visiting our house (a friend of my husbands, not someone we hired) and he noted how much I said “No.” Pointed out that “stop” is far more effective and damned if he wasn’t right! When I started with “stop,” the kid knew that he should stop what he was doing. Duh!
That’s a really, really good idea. Or I could just set up our normal tree and surround it with her toys, which she already has no interest in whatsoever.
I’m glad Miss C is not answering the comments, bc this is a strategy question, and you might not want to show all your cards. My question, Madame President, is whether you will clear those shelves entirely, OR fill them with Tupperware, OR leave them as they are and see if your child is one of those who responds to “Don’t touch”? You do know that Martin, at age 2, and a little boy I was watching who had just learned to walk, somehow got my grandfather clock to fall on them the second I turned my back? Your posts always put me back in touch with nostalgic memories!
You can really tell how great a person I am that my first thought was, “Oh no! I bet the grandfather clock TOTALLY broke!” Oh right, we’re supposed to care more about the babies. Riiiight. I am totally a Replicant. I don’t know what we’re going to do about the shelves, but we will likely submit them to the We-Had-Nice-Things-Before-We-Had-A-Baby Museum.
I am so not ready for this stage. Nobody seems to understand in my house that soon the baby will be crawling and all this garbage they leave all over the place will end up in her mouth. It drives me nuts.
I’ve never babyproofed, though, and I haven’t hurt a kid yet. Maybe I can keep up my streak of no home accidents with baby #3.
Garbage is the key word there. C is also completely obsessed with the garbage cans throughout the house and would dive in if given the chance. Why do babies go after all the things they shouldn’t? Just why?
Ha ha – my husband was so paranoid about Dorian – he baby proofed EVERYTHING -it’s like living with Ralph Nadar (except he’s not running for president)…so of course the one thing that we didn’t do, anchor the dresser to the wall – was the one thing that Dorian pulled down from the wall. Hee hee – Miss C – go, eat those blinds – then take your parents out to Chap Harve’s
Hahahahaha! She owes us dinner for sure (even if it’s a crappy burger place…it’s the thought that counts.)
She. Is. So. CUTE.
Thanks! She does alright. ;)
Oh my gosh! We have the same baby. Sonia’s greatest loves: cords, breaking our blinds trying to eat them, tags, pulling things off of shelves. I’ve basically had to resort to just turning the bottom half of our bookshelf into a toy box because not only does she pull out books, she rips them apart. She had one of those lift the flap books and went through the book and tore out all of the flaps one by one while I was in the bathroom one day.
That’s what flap books are for, right? C has this stupid Baby Einstein board book that she loves to chew on, and she sucked on it so much that her saliva fused the pages together and I had to use a screwdriver to pry them apart. Genius materials, I tell you. GENIUS.
We had one of those, too! Books are Sonia’s chew toy of choice. And now that she’s discovered ripping? Oh man, it is all over.
Oh, and receipts. She loves to eat receipts.
We had to babyproof the toilet–it costs a boatload to hire a plumber to remove a flushed wash cloth. We had to babyproof the oven, because they are SO much fun to crawl into. We should have removed the interior locks (that can’t be opened from the outside) from the bathrooms before we had to have the Chicago fire department, with a hook and ladder truck, break the bathroom window to extricate our screaming 18-month old. Oh, yes, it just gets more and more fun. BTW, she is freaking adorable.
Oh.Em.Gee. That is the stuff that nightmares are made of! And awesome blog posts. Just sayin’. Hint, hint. Nudge, nudge.
Nudge and hint taken. I’ve been so caught up in my own book project–yes, I am another dreamer writing a book–that anything humorous has slipped by. Maybe writing about child-proofing would be fun and pull me out of my “gee, it’s fun being bipolar” funk.
Hilarious !!!! By George, I think she’s got it !!!!
She’s got everything. In her mouth. Yay. ;D
That is one super cute little girl! Also, my house is STILL about that safe for babies, and my kid is 20 months old. We use toys he’s out-grown to block the worst danger zones, which works…until it suddenly doesn’t. I don’t know what we’re going to do when he figures out how to open the bathroom door :O
Aren’t there little plastic cover things that you can put on doorknobs to keep kids from going in and out? Haha, I like the concept behind them, but I;m pretty sure that they would last in the real world for about 15 minutes.
What a darling! I’d love to see more of her.
I love that you’ve decorated for Halloween.
I don’t have kids because I’d probably keep them in a sanitized bubble — I’m already neurotic. I was afraid of passing more of a pernicious strain of neurosis to my spawn :D
Thanks! Not gonna lie, she’s pretty cute. I think my husband would keep her in a bubble if he could. She hasn’t been sick yet (knock on wood) and we like to stave off the plague as long as we possibly can.
Brilliant!!! I’m sorta tempted to hand my blog over to Kid Awesome for a day, but let’s be real: she’s nowhere near as cute a C!!
DO IT! Miss C will for sure reblog the heck out of all her posts! Also, I think you’re being a little modest about Kid Awesome. She’s freaking adorbs. :D
I laughed so hard reading this! Clearly Miss C inherited your hilarity!
Haha she’s been taking improv classes.
Aw she is flipping cute. I like that she eats blinds too.
Thanks. She is quite a gourmet.
I think it’s time for Miss C to be Freshly Pressed!
I remember those days well. I put all books on shelves my kids couldn’t reach and left big, easy-to-put-back toys on the bottom shelves. Then I left two kitchen cabinets free of a cabinet lock and filled them with tupperware. My kids loved pulling the plastic cups and bowls out. Sure I eventually had to put everything back in, but there was no point being neat about it. It would all just come back out in another twenty minutes or so. :)
Thanks! I am slowly learning just to let go and allow her to make a mess. I do one big tidy around noon and then one after she goes to bed. I am pretty anal retentive so this is a huge step for me to only pick up twice a day!
Oh, believe me, I’m the same way. :)
My friend’s got a baby who is just into crawling. I don’t know how she is coping, I think I’d have to shut the baby in one room! It looks like you have lots of fun things to explore…can’t wait to see the costume, I hope it’s one of those spiders or lobsters with big legs. ;)
Oh, it’s pretty cute! I will be revealing it next week!
I don’t see how people truly ever babyproof their homes. Keelin is all over the place and there are still plenty of things she can get into but this mama isn’t rollin in enough dough to hide all the terrors. Miss C is stinkin cute!!!!
I don’t get it either! I’m nervous to even leave her alone in her own room because of all the perils! I left her in there on the floor today while I took five seconds to go to the bathroom, and when I returned, she was under the crib. UNDER THE CRIB! She is ridiculous. In a good way, of course ;)
Oh trust me I feel your pain. She was right next to me the other day and I took about 3 steps away to grab a tissue. When I came back she was nowhere to be found. I thought she was hiding in the closet but when she wasn’t there either I looked right at the steps… which hadn’t been babyproofed yet, and there she was gently rolling down the first set of stairs. She was totally fine and barely made a fuss but I almost had a heart attack!
I love a good chomp on some blinds…mmm.
Just think, she won’t have asthma because of you. Give yourself a pat on the back.
I like the way you think. Screw flu shots, just let them play on the floor!
This reminds me of our house a few years ago (it’s less safe now). My parents say it’s important to keep it this way so you never get the urge to run your own home daycare or anything crazy like that.
Ok, this is coming out of nowhere, but are home day cares pretty common in Canada? I was watching this show on TV that is made in Canada and they talked for a long time about them, and I hadn’t even really heard of them before.
They’re really common, but I would never use one. You never know whether the person running it actually pays any attention to the kids or how safe the place is, etc. I’m sure there are plenty of good ones but there are lots of super-sketchy ones too. And even if the daycare is well run, you get the full-on parenting style of the house, their beliefs, who knows what else. We had a friend who was going to do it from her home but she backed out of doing it even though she completed all the record checks and had her home inspected (it doesn’t take much more than that to start one up). I’m amazed there aren’t more home day cares in the US, but then again maybe day care is more institutionalized there because mat leaves are shorter? Day care is a really sore political point here. We get these great mat leaves but often don’t have good options for when we return to work…
Yeah, I think they are a lot more instituionalized here too, but I have heard of home day cares here too, and it’s always in a negative context. It seems like anyone could open one up. Scary.
PS, got another search engine term today of someone looking for you: Teddy bear wine. Niiiice.
hahaa, they never came looking for me!
Way to go Miss C!!! It sounds like she pretty much runs things around your house (as it should be according to Cody and Carter.)
She absolutely runs the place. It’s a good thing she’s so cute and happy because I work for peanuts.
Ohmigosh, your baby is a living doll. So beautiful!!
And yeah, kids get into stuff. When I lived with my sister and nephew, I was surprised at how you can’t really put anything on the ground. Babies just want it in their mouths. NOW.
Thanks, Jen! Being cute is part of her strategy for taking over the universe. Look out! Yeah, babies love to put stuff in their mouths. Everything except food at mealtimes. They are FUN like that.
Babies NEED to be all sweet smelling and innocent and cute and stuff. Otherwise, would we put up with their crap? Literally, the crap that blows out of their diapers and up their backs. I think not.
Amen! My thought exactly! The only thing that gets you though the first months, when the baby only poops and cries and sucks on you, is the promise that they MAY smile at you. Their cuteness is all they have, literally, and even that is in short supply when you’re sleep deprived.
I never understood the facination with tags, either. One of my girls had a stuffed animal and she used to hold that thing and rub the tag for all it was worth. And what was it about magazines and plastic bags? That crinkling noise must be like cat nip for babies!
Yes! She adores that crinkling sound! Except when she’s tired, then it just scares the bejesus out of her. Go figure.
That’s too funny. My daughter gets into everything – now that she is walking, it is even worse. Our living room is now bare of everything. I think she should learn not to touch/eat/lick/bite those things but I am pregnant, tired and my back hurts. I can’t chase her as much as I did when I wasn’t pregnant so this room will be bare until I regain some kind of energy.
Congratulations! You are amazing for even barely keeping up with her now that you’re baking another one. Im sure that if I get pregnant again, out place will be completely bare as well.
Why do I ALWAYS laugh whenever anyone says (or types) “AMIRITE?” Hearing Miss C say it with her baby face made it all the more funny.
It is so funny, AMIRITE! :D Sorry, I’m a nerd, I couldn’t resist. Thanks, Rachel!
Aww Miss C is so cute. Even if she ingests fake spider webs. That’s considered protein, right? Baby proofing sucks because not only does it make it hard for the kids I babysit to kill themselves, it’s hard for me to open the cabinet to get to the garbage.
Haha no one wins with baby proofing. Especially me and my need for Hobby Lobby junk all over the place.
It’s like I somehow knew this post was coming. hahaha
I know! I wonder why that is ;D
I hope Miss C comes back with another post soon :)
She’s already clambering to return!
I could write ditto to so much of this for our little guy! What is it about tags that is so interesting? Also the affinity for power cords is unnerving. I have to run around and unplug everything before I put him down to crawl. Glad to know yours has those same penchants for the dangerous. Oh and our house is a baby death trap too. Unsecured bookshelves, flat screen tv not mounted to the wall, cabinets not secured by baby proofing…
Yes! C is obsessed with cords too! She loves the cord to the computer and this makes me very nervous, both for her safety and the safety of the computer. I swear, babies know exactly what is not for them and go after it.
Hey! So I’m not the only one posting and commenting to pictures of my child (boy, in my case) on my blog!
Great to meet you and I’ll make sure to stop by regularly.
Regards,
Daan van den Bergh
Hi Daan! Welcome and thanks for commenting! Will be checking out your blog soon!
Miss C. is absolutely adorable. She did a wonderful post! Hilarious. She is quite funny. Tags, plungers and blinds all so yummy!
Thank you so much! She is quite the up-and-coming blogger, eh?
This is fabulous. I might add that the picture in my latest post, Silhouette, was taken with only one of my four children present, and it was the ONLY one who refrains from playing with plungers (hubby was haplessly at home minding the rest, bless his wife-pleasing heart).
May I please borrow Miss C to ‘splain to my soon-to-be-ballistic-husband how the red Mardi Gras beads wound up down our bathtub drain and on their way to our already-ailing septic tank tonight while he was at work during the four-year-old’s bath time?
I have consulted her about your question, and she said that Mardi Gras beads are actually the preferred offering of the bathtub gods. I wouldn’t believe her, though, as she also thinks that her stuffed frog is her best friend and that Elmo is real.
Please thank her for me – brilliant baby. No ballisticism on this end…only “Bring me my toolbox, please.” Must be conditioned by now to bathtub god offerings.
This afternoon I had the luxury of showering alone. Not totally alone, mind you, because I had a plunger and a toilet brush in there with me so Lucy could just crawl around behind the toilet while I showered instead of chewing on either of these fine toys. I am planing to outfit her in something scrubby. The floor behind my toilet has never been so clean and she was wearing terry cloth jams. Imagine if she’d had something scrubbier!?
That’s genius! I am prototyping a swiffer pad onesie for C for that express purpose. You best be believing I’m gonna get that one on Pinterest as soon as I’m done with it.
boythis made me smile big. Miss C is beautiful– but you already knew that. I love it when you guys post pictures of your kids.. brings back lots o’ sweet memories.
I have no idea what we’re going to do once this kid starts traveling on his own. This apartment is a baby death trap.
Bumpers and booze. Bumpers and booze.
I can’t believe how much this home looks like my home in Falls Church, VA.
Ha! Babies are the great equalizer.
I hunkered down, waiting for hurricane sandy, getting caught up on blog posts.
Hang tight! Hope you miss the brunt of it!
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