Outside Looking In

I live in a cape cod built in the 1950s. When I bought this house my dad put a door on the stairs going up to the big room upstairs. We shut off the heat up there and mainly use it for storage. The main floor has 2 bedrooms and a bathroom and is plenty big enough for just a toddler and myself.

A couple weeks ago I took some extra flooring from when we redid the kitchen that I found in the basement and carried it upstairs to the big empty room. I snapped it together and pushed it against the wall. I made the babe sit on it (that room has great lighting).

Remember these pics?



Yeah, it was about 50 degrees in that room when these were taken.

The first time I attempted these pics the sun was setting and I didn’t have my lightscoop yet. They were crap. I also had her in a different outfit. In the first attempt she was holding (and drooling all over) a candy cane. It was broken into a bunch of pieces when I had to take it from her when we went downstairs. The day of the second shoot I took the bag of broken candy cane pieces and we headed back upstairs. I gave her a piece and she would sit still and eat it. Click, click, click. She’d move, give her another piece, and click, click, click. It’s a good system we’ve got going. When we were done I just left the bag upstairs, figuring I could use them again when I take more pictures.

A few days ago there was an earthquake in the Midwest. Wait….what?!?! No this is still the same story, just hush and listen.

We were in bed and I was still mostly unconscious. I heard something upstairs. At this point I must have gone totally unconscious because sleep > a collapsed roof. Obviously. Sometime later, I don’t really know how long, I heard someone (about 3 feet tall) playing with the door to the upstairs, which is right outside my room. I told Avery to come get in bed with me and we snuggled while I checked emails, facebook, and twitter from my phone. It was then that I learned about the earthquake. Who says you can’t learn anything from social media?

Let’s fast forward to yesterday morning. I heard something RUN across the floor upstairs early this morning. I remember thinking, in my semi-conscious state, “huh maybe the roof DID collapse and there is an animal up there”. I haven’t been up there since I took those pics. But surely I would have noticed before now right? The neighbors would have told me? My house would have gotten colder? My very next thought was “I’M not going up there to find a live animal, what if it has rabies?” So I made a mental note to call my dad later. Obviously.

Click.

“Avery, where are you”?

“I here mom” and she stumbles into my room rubbing her eyes. Well if she was in bed then who just shut the door to the stairs? THAT RABID ANIMAL HAS OPPOSABLE THUMBS! I was 0.01 seconds from a major freak out when I caught a whiff of something.

“Avery, why do you smell minty”?

“MOM! Justin Bieber acky.” This is her go to response when she knows she did something wrong. Mainly because she knows it cracks me up. And thank you to my sister for teaching her that.

“AVERY….”

“Justin Bieber, mom, is acky” ::awkward laugh::

You guys? My kid WENT UPSTAIRS and ate the candy cane. Let’s not even touch the subject of how many ways she could have gotten hurt (because I KNOW), but HOW did she even REMEMBER there was a candy cane up there? And earlier when there was the earthquake? I can only assume she was up there then too and doing something that sounded like the roof caving in.

OH.EM.GEE

I don’t even know a solution to this problem. I sleep with my door open and her door cracked. They are right across the hall from each other. I usually only have a small crack on her door (so I can hear the door creak when she opens it) but I’ve been keeping it about halfway because her room gets too cold when the door is shut. A few nights I’ve put up the baby gate in the hall so she can’t have free roam to the rest of the house (mainly because she goes straight for the electronics and broke the remote to the DVD player the other day). In theory, I thought this worked. She could only go to her room or my room when she woke up. Baby gate on one side and door on the other. Little did I know Houdini figured out door handles, well THAT door handle at least.

I guess I could put up the baby gate IN her door way? Then when she wakes up she will be PISSED because she can’t get out of her room. But, I’ll know she’s awake, right? Or, she will climb the gate and REALLY have free reign of the house. She’s not normally much of a climber, I also didn’t think she would go upstairs.

I’m thinking duct tape might be the perfect answer for this problem.