Trying to Keep Up With a Toddler
When I was pregnant with my first baby, my mother told me, “Start doing things in twenty minute intervals. When the baby is born, that’s all the time you’ll have to get things done.” Now, my mother has six children and, at the time, twenty-five years of parenting experience. Why I didn’t believe her still boggles my mind. (If you’re reading this, Mom, I’m sorry. Because of course, you were right!) My baby was born and suddenly I couldn’t keep up with anything! Finally I tried my mom’s advice: doing twenty minute intervals of housework, writing and any other chores while my son took his little naps. I still couldn’t quite keep up with everything, but I sure got a lot closer than I had been before!
Now my baby is a couple weeks shy of eighteen months and we are preparing for Baby #2 to arrive in early November. As we get the apartment ready and prepare Gary for being a big brother, I’ve come to really appreciate my mother’s twenty minute rule. Twenty minutes is about how long my son will be entertained by a movie or his toys before he starts finding messier, more adventurous things to do. And so while he’s awake I can get twenty minutes of housework done at a time. But I’ve learned that I cannot get any writing done while he is awake unless there is someone else available to keep an eye on him. My son’s name means “mighty spearman, noble and bright”. I should have given him a name that means, “sneaky, speedy destruct-o-mite”! If I decide to sit down to write while Gary is awake, then I will look up from the computer to find some sort of disaster either in progress or already completed. You see, when I do twenty minutes of housework I can still hear what my son is doing. If he suddenly becomes quiet, I know I need to stop what I’m doing and check on him. I’ve decided that the phrase, “silent but deadly,” was first coined by a mom. Because we all know that when it suddenly gets quiet, our little ones have gotten into some kind of mischief. However, when I’m writing I won’t notice it suddenly get quiet because I become totally and completely zoned in on what I’m doing. I won’t hear him until he’s screaming and I won’t see out the corner of my eye that he’s scribbling on my walls with crayon…again. And so as tempting as it is to try to write while he’s awake, I’ve learned that it’s best not to.
But even with that rule, it doesn’t mean that my little guy doesn’t find ways to get himself into trouble despite my best efforts. He has learned how to climb onto the tall chairs by our dining table and has gleefully broken all of the tall, taper candles my father gave me for Christmas. Luckily, he has not broken the three handcrafted candlesticks that Dad made and gave with the candles. The candles can be replaced, the candlesticks are special. And so I’ve taken to pushing the chairs in after every meal to ensure that Gary doesn’t climb up and destroy anything else. I can tell my son already has the makings of a true artist: his mark is everywhere. He has colored on almost all of the doors and some of the walls in our apartment with either pencil, pen or crayon. Thankfully, I’m going to have to paint over most of these walls again anyway when we move out, so it’s not a huge deal. We are now far more careful about making sure that anything that colors or marks is out of reach. He is also wickedly fast and silent when the refrigerator door is open. Today while I was making lunch for us, I opened the refrigerator to get out the strawberry jam for our sandwiches. When I turned around to put the jam away, there was Gary, that cute “Aren’t you proud of me, Mommy?” grin on his face, precariously holding an open carton of eggs and about to drop a fourth one onto the floor. I couldn’t have been turned around for even a full minute and there they were: three cracked and oozing eggs on my kitchen floor with the rest about to join them. I don’t think I’ve moved so fast in my life pulling the carton of eggs away from my son, putting them back in the fridge and then grabbing a warm washcloth to clean up the gooey eggs my son was now splashing in. He got to help in the clean-up; meaning that he pushed around the washcloth a little bit with me before that got boring and he tried to run away to find some new game. But before he could escape, I wrapped him up in my free arm and helped him get his hands cleaned up before he could put them in his mouth. The last thing I need is for him to get salmonella from raw egg.
And so the adventures continue. Now it’s quiet-time in the Elliott home, which means quiet music is playing and I sit down with my little boy and we read stories or he plays with quiet toys for about an hour. In some ways, he is very much his father, but as far as napping is concerned, he’s all mine. In other words, he won’t nap unless he is teething, growing or sick. But today is my lucky day. He was playing with his quiet toys and then suddenly he got very, very quiet. I looked up from my book and saw him flopped over on the floor, toys scattered around him, sound asleep. So without further ado, I’m going to jump into my novel and start typing away. After all, twenty minutes isn’t a whole lot of time. :)
Now my baby is a couple weeks shy of eighteen months and we are preparing for Baby #2 to arrive in early November. As we get the apartment ready and prepare Gary for being a big brother, I’ve come to really appreciate my mother’s twenty minute rule. Twenty minutes is about how long my son will be entertained by a movie or his toys before he starts finding messier, more adventurous things to do. And so while he’s awake I can get twenty minutes of housework done at a time. But I’ve learned that I cannot get any writing done while he is awake unless there is someone else available to keep an eye on him. My son’s name means “mighty spearman, noble and bright”. I should have given him a name that means, “sneaky, speedy destruct-o-mite”! If I decide to sit down to write while Gary is awake, then I will look up from the computer to find some sort of disaster either in progress or already completed. You see, when I do twenty minutes of housework I can still hear what my son is doing. If he suddenly becomes quiet, I know I need to stop what I’m doing and check on him. I’ve decided that the phrase, “silent but deadly,” was first coined by a mom. Because we all know that when it suddenly gets quiet, our little ones have gotten into some kind of mischief. However, when I’m writing I won’t notice it suddenly get quiet because I become totally and completely zoned in on what I’m doing. I won’t hear him until he’s screaming and I won’t see out the corner of my eye that he’s scribbling on my walls with crayon…again. And so as tempting as it is to try to write while he’s awake, I’ve learned that it’s best not to.
But even with that rule, it doesn’t mean that my little guy doesn’t find ways to get himself into trouble despite my best efforts. He has learned how to climb onto the tall chairs by our dining table and has gleefully broken all of the tall, taper candles my father gave me for Christmas. Luckily, he has not broken the three handcrafted candlesticks that Dad made and gave with the candles. The candles can be replaced, the candlesticks are special. And so I’ve taken to pushing the chairs in after every meal to ensure that Gary doesn’t climb up and destroy anything else. I can tell my son already has the makings of a true artist: his mark is everywhere. He has colored on almost all of the doors and some of the walls in our apartment with either pencil, pen or crayon. Thankfully, I’m going to have to paint over most of these walls again anyway when we move out, so it’s not a huge deal. We are now far more careful about making sure that anything that colors or marks is out of reach. He is also wickedly fast and silent when the refrigerator door is open. Today while I was making lunch for us, I opened the refrigerator to get out the strawberry jam for our sandwiches. When I turned around to put the jam away, there was Gary, that cute “Aren’t you proud of me, Mommy?” grin on his face, precariously holding an open carton of eggs and about to drop a fourth one onto the floor. I couldn’t have been turned around for even a full minute and there they were: three cracked and oozing eggs on my kitchen floor with the rest about to join them. I don’t think I’ve moved so fast in my life pulling the carton of eggs away from my son, putting them back in the fridge and then grabbing a warm washcloth to clean up the gooey eggs my son was now splashing in. He got to help in the clean-up; meaning that he pushed around the washcloth a little bit with me before that got boring and he tried to run away to find some new game. But before he could escape, I wrapped him up in my free arm and helped him get his hands cleaned up before he could put them in his mouth. The last thing I need is for him to get salmonella from raw egg.
And so the adventures continue. Now it’s quiet-time in the Elliott home, which means quiet music is playing and I sit down with my little boy and we read stories or he plays with quiet toys for about an hour. In some ways, he is very much his father, but as far as napping is concerned, he’s all mine. In other words, he won’t nap unless he is teething, growing or sick. But today is my lucky day. He was playing with his quiet toys and then suddenly he got very, very quiet. I looked up from my book and saw him flopped over on the floor, toys scattered around him, sound asleep. So without further ado, I’m going to jump into my novel and start typing away. After all, twenty minutes isn’t a whole lot of time. :)
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