January 27th

it’s Dougal’s birthday today, he is ten years old! // baby eats: croissant, cheese & tomatoes // I found this tiny leaf skeleton in my living room // new nails new life, acrylics done by Leon & Anna at Fantasy Nails // apparently 2014 is the Year of the ADORABLE BABBY PONY :3 // I started making smoothies again // everyone wants hugs

In December when I was decorating for Christmas I put up a string of globe lights in the dining room (you can find these in a lot of places but they are cheapest BY FAR at Target, I actually had Sym’s dad pick them up for me when he was in the US a while ago, like pre-Target Canada). I loved it so much I decided to keep it up after the holidays, but I needed to change the way I hung it so I didn’t have an extension cord hanging down the middle of wall where babies could grab it. I decided to run the cord up the corner of the dining room wall since there are shelves in the corner with an outlet behind them, out of reach of baby hands.

I also had some cable management plastic channel thingers (I believe that is the scientific term) that Taylor bought probably a hundred million years ago to manage all the cables under his desk, but then never did. I figured running those up the wall with the extension cord inside them would help the whole thing to look tidier, plus if I want I can paint them to match the wall (currently they are white).

It was a brilliant plan, and I have it all set up and ready for the lights (I just need to put up some more hooks to hang the light string in the new way) buuuuuuut while I was doing all that Gwen managed to get a box of Kleenex off my desk and HILARITY ENSUED. I wonder what babies are thinking when they do stuff like pull every single tissue out of a box and pile them in drifts around themselves, are they like “Oh nice, a white square. I’ll just pull this white square out of the white square holder and- hang on a tick! What is this? ANOTHER white square??? I’ll just pull it out of the white square holder and- hang on a tick! What is this? ANOTHER white square???” aaaaaand repeat one million times. BABIES, right?

She’s also recently made her way into the bathroom and unspooled an entire roll of toilet paper, and into the foyer where she unspooled an entire roll of dog poop bags. She also figured out how to open the drawers in the entertainment stand and stole all the remote controls. I had to steal childlocks from the kitchen cupboards to secure the drawers and when she figured that out she emptied the cupboard where I keep my filing cabinet full of work papers and receipts. Thankfully I’d already ordered an extra-long retractable baby gate to go between the edge of the cupboards and the kitchen island, and an extra set of hooks for the other side of the island so I can put my hallway-blocking gate across that space. Let me tell you, it’s been a HUGE relief being able to block the baby out of the kitchen when I’m cooking, or loading the dishwasher, or doing anything where I don’t want a toddler pinching me on the backs of my knees (once she did it while I was cutting tomatoes and I jumped and stabbed myself in the finger). Seriously if you have a stupid, open-plan apartment where you can’t use traditional baby gates to keep little ones out of places they shouldn’t go then I WHOLE-HEARTEDLY recommend these.