Miscellaneous Developments

The gate I bought on Amazon arrived today. I was going to try to get it at Target, but it occurred to me that I would probably never get to the store at all, and in the meantime I was getting tired from running up and down the stairs all the time to fetch Knuckles and Bagel, and also Bagel's developed a nasty habit of chucking stuff (particularly heavy stuff) down the stairs when Knuckles is down at the bottom. So I just ordered it, and it works great! I installed it at the bottom of the stairs and it was really easy. The reviews say it can stop cats, so if you have a cat that you want to keep out of a room, take note.

For our Family Home Evening (which we held today instead of yesterday, because FH got into an all-day after-hours support call yesterday) our lesson was about child safety. I put labels that say "Constant Vigilance!" on both sides of the gate and on several of the childproofing devices and explained to the older kids that this is to remind them that they always have to be vigilant about safety to protect their younger brothers. (The Harry Potter reference didn't hurt either, for our young wizarding fans!) They have to always close the gate, always relatch the cupboards, always put away the scissors, always put the Tot-Lok key up high instead of leaving it on the cupboard door (which effectively leaves the cupboard unlocked). If they forget once or get lazy once, Bad Things May Happen That Will Haunt Them For The Rest Of Their Lives. I also attempted to impress upon Sonshine the extreme need for him to not try experiments with the new gate like "How hard can I lean on it before it pops off?" or "How many stairs can I put my feet up while my hands are still on top of the gate?" and on Princess the need for her not to climb bookcases. We'll see how well that worked tomorrow, when I bet Sonshine will think, "She didn't say anything about not trying 'How many bodyslams does it take to dislodge the latch,' now did she?" Princess will probably go to the other extreme and avoid standing too near to bookcases for a week, for fear they will topple over on her.

FH got into an all-day after-hours support call yesterday at about 4 or 5 in the morning. Something really screwy had gone wrong and he couldn't figure out what had caused it, but he found a way to fix it which unfortunately took all day. Today the client called up and blamed him for starting the problem! As if he had nothing better to do in the wee hours of New Year's Day than to mess around with their server! They didn't even check their own logs to see if he had logged in before the problem started (he hadn't, of course, but that didn't stop them). So he and his boss got chewed out over it. So this is a "what-kind-of-idiot" paragraph, as in "What kind of idiot bites the hand that feeds them?" I don't usually blog about FH's work, but I was just so outraged that I couldn't resist.

Besides answering support calls for ingrates, FH was busy this weekend. He rearranged all the furniture in the boys' room in an attempt to keep them from destroying their windowshade again. It won't work, because not only do Bagel and Sonshine have a clear path to get to the windowshade, but Knuckles plays with the windowshade now that he can reach it from his crib; but I haven't the heart to tell him. I also haven't the heart to tell him that the way he's arranged the dressers next to Sonshine's bed means that they are now stair-steps for Bagel to climb up on top of. The previous arrangement of dressers made that impossible. I'm taking bets on how long it'll take Bagel to figure out he can climb up there, and how long it'll take Sonshine to start jumping off the top of his dresser. Bagel's already figured out he can climb up on the bed to reach things on top of one dresser, and he has a long history of climbing up on furniture to get something he wants, so the clock is definitely ticking. My bet is two weeks for Bagel and fifteen days for Sonshine.

UPDATE 1/3: Bets are no longer being accpeted; Bagel chased Sonshine up onto the dresser and Sonshine jumped off to escape him.

Sigh.