Block Vacuum

It is questionable judgement, perhaps, purchasing toy sets with more than, say, 30 pieces, or even up to 50 pieces. Annoyingly, my wife's most recent toy purchase was a set of 250 small building blocks. Now truly, Teague loves the blocks (in a way) though certainly not for building anything. His primary goal has become to disperse these blocks over as wide and even an area as possible within our house. With methodical ambition, he throws the hundreds of blocks from the container in a circle all around him, out to a circumference of 7-8 feet. In workman-like fashion, he proceeds then to push these blocks into the far corners of the room, eventually covering the entire room in a more-or-less even dispersal pattern.

He proceeds to the bookshelves and removes all available books from the lower shelves, scattering them in a similar fashion, stopping occasionally to browse. His job is not yet done though, and so he moves on to those CDs that he can reach on the lower shelves near the stereo system, and scatters them about the floor, flinging them with abandon. He hasn't figured out yet how to open them, but when he does, I'm certain that I will have many scratched up and useless discs on hand.

Finally, just to wrap things up for the day, he proceeds to the kitchen for a session with the cupboards. Tupperware, pots, pans, and many plastic implements are then brought into the open for his inspection. And so I am kept busy all day pursuing this chaotic force, and so I ask myself whether it is worth cleaning up these disasters as they occur, since they simply RE-occur throughout the day. My answer to myself is that I know that if I let it all go to the end of the day, then there will simply not be enough time to get everything back into proper order, and anyway, I'd be too tired after a couple of evening cocktails and a hot dinner to even approach it. What I need is a massive block vacuum, or maybe an all-purpose toy vacuum that can, like in the Cat and the Hat, just suck everything up all at once.

The young master Teague is now able to climb stairs. We have very steep wooden stairs in our house. One set leads from the first to the second floor, and another steep set leads from the second floor hallway up to the master bedroom on the third floor. And now that he has discovered this ability, his primary goal in life has become to attempt an ascent of any stairway within his view. I have permanently mounted gates at the TOP of the stairs to thwart his plunging down them, but up until this week I have had nothing at the bottom of the stairs. Now that he can climb, I have pressure mounted gates for the bottom of the stairs, but at first I didn't always remember to put them up. Then a couple days ago, I turned my back for a moment and he was half way up this dangerous, wooden K2. I snatched him from the stairs, reprimanding myself. He so easily could have fallen backwards and tumbled down 6 or 7 unforgiving stairs. How stupid I am! I was really pissed-off at myself. I mean, Teague can ably entertain himself, and so I typically let him roam the downstairs at will, most of which is baby-proofed; in this case, his abilities suddenly exceeded my precautions. I guess it just shows the necessity for constant vigilance. Now, after improvements, the house has the look of an Iraqi military zone, with multiple barriers, gates, and protective fencing strung along the banisters. It must look to others like we are horribly paranoid parents, but I just can't help but do as much as possible to protect against the unforeseen. I know that I can't protect him from everything in life, a life that is messy, unpredictable, and full of dangerous surprise, but those things that are in my control I must not ignore.