house … proofing?

Oh. Hello.

Mimi returns!

My mother tells me that it was about when I was nine months old that she found me sitting under an ironing board, slowly pulling the cord of an iron. She, on other occasion, found me with a butcher knife in one hand, running my finger up and down the blade. I know, my first words to my mother upon hearing these episodes were, “What were you thinking leaving those things in my reach?” too. “I don’t know how you didn’t die, honestly,” she replied. Thanks, Mother.

Yuki started crawling two weeks ago. She had been trying for a while and slowly, but surely, she started to move across the floor. We had anticipated such an event during the holiday break so we went to IKEA and got a bunch of stuff to clear the floor in our living room. Philip, in his usual home improvement manner, had a fistfight with the shelves for two days, but thanks to 1-800-Rob-Ward, got them all up.

"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Then she started getting better at the crawling. In a matter of seconds, she would go from the middle of the kitchen floor to under the table near a bunch of stuff. She started emptying recycling bins, garbage cans, trying to eat extension cords, and throwing our shoes around.

Ah, this is fine garbage

The really good stuff is at the bottom!

Well, you keep calling it my diaper bag.

That’s another thing, how are babies so freakishly strong??!! Then she went after catalogues and magazines. Chucking them, ripping them apart, and of course, eating them. Within a week, our restaurant outings went from sitting still and enjoying a meal with our angelic baby to constantly bending down to get the stuff she ripped or dropped. I have to distract her with a stack of magazines and stand directly in front of the dog’s upstairs water-dish just to brush my teeth. She can now go from sitting, to crawling, back to sitting. She will go everywhere she is not supposed to go and if you try to give her a toy, she will brush it out your hands. OH MY GOD SHE IS GETTING SMARTER. As Philip yelled out one night in panic, “She is learning and I’m not doing enough to teach her!” We are now frantically flipping through catalogues (the one’s Yuki isn’t eating) to find more house-proofing equipment in efforts to stay a few seconds ahead of her. Philip’s brother Paul told him that his first three kids showed no interest in cabinets, but the fourth one can’t get enough of them, so we have have been waiting and see what her interests are to properly house proof.

Finally, a drawer nice enough to sleep in!

This will be fun until she discovers what she can do with one of these and a credit card.

Well, we needed to sweep under there anyway.

As I was taking these pictures, I felt like one of those journalists who document people being eaten by lions. Readers would say, “Why didn’t she help them?” Perhaps this is where I am exactly like my mother … sigh …

A parent at my theatre said, “These are the easy years.” (Of course she can say that NOW!). She said it’s labor intensive now but wait until they can talk and think and start bringing homework home. They won’t give your mind a chance to rest. Good. Great. It’s a good thing Philip bought me a Nintendo DS with “Brain Age” for Christmas. But at the rate I am testing. I won’t be able to help her beyond 3rd grade. I’m so proud of my extremely one-sided education—correction, learning style. Do you even understand the humiliation of being Asian and sucking at math? I digress …

On a different note, I opened a show last night. Pippin.



It came out pretty well. It was made possible with Philip’s help in putting Yuki to bed every night while I was at rehearsal. He is the greatest man I know.

At least one of us is going to get some sleep tonight!