Nothing is Safe

I have an 18-month old daughter. Up until now, our child-proofing strategy has been to move things out of her reach. Now, there is nothing out of her reach. She is currently climbing up my right side, saying, Oh, Oh Look! and grabbing the computer mouse.

Nothing is safe.

Now, there's a reason why I don't spend many hours working - I want to spend lots of time with her. But there are times, like when I haven't had enough sleep because she's decided to wake up multiple times in the night, when I really just want her to leave me alone. The tricky part is, if she does leave me alone it only means that there will be a price to pay when I hunt her down. Sometimes I can actually see her doing something that she shouldn't. Maybe I'll let her get away with it, maybe I won't. If she's leaving me alone, then I have to weigh the benefits of that against how hard it will be to clean up or fix later. There is always a price to pay for a moment of peace.

For example, I was folding some laundry (assuming that she was not getting into anything) and when I was done, I found her with a Pepsi can, squeezing it at intervals to make a really neat noise.

She had spilled Pepsi on the vinyl floor, and her socks were soaking wet. I took the can away and, since her hands free, she leaned over and rubbed her hands in the spilled Pepsi. Then I had the lose-lose situation: if I clean her hands, the floor will still be dirty and I may or may not be able to get her to keep away from touching it. If I clean the floor, her hands will still be dirty and I may not be able to keep her from touching the floor....

A few days ago, we were outside and I let her go off into a fenced part of the yard, no need for me to watch her THAT closely, right??? I could see her, I was talking to my mom, blah blah.... when I walked over to where she was, she had a snail and was digging it out of it's shell. She had slime on her shirt, her hands, her mouth. Ugh.

There are moments in every mom's life when you just wish there was someone else to handle it. You almost say, hey, who's gonna take care of that? But it's all yours!