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I love that part at the beginning of the Pioneer Woman’s show where she says “here’s what’s happening.” It makes it all the more personal, and because I live in Arkansas and she lives in Oklahoma, we’re practically neighbors, so I can imagine she’s come over for a chat. And maybe to make me mashed potatoes.
There’s nothing so exciting as ranching, homeschooling and Food Network show producing over here, but what’s happening is that for a few days there, I stopped being a hermit and actually saw other grownup humans besides my husband.
Last Thursday we had a date night and went out to dinner with a few friends and had drinks afterward (is there anything that makes you feel more grown up than ordering an honest-to-goodness cocktail?). We had more friends over after bedtime on Saturday and got to use the playroom as a playroom for adults for the first time in a long time. Sunday afternoon there was a baby shower for one of my mama friends expecting her little girl just about any minute now, and that evening we had a couple of friends over, made lasagna and had more good conversation.
Then Monday the Bit was out of school so we went to a playdate at a friend’s house and got to see a bunch of her old friends (and mine, too, plus the three new little boys). It was hard to adjust to my regular hermit routine after all that!
But this is really a story about stairs. Or more specifically, about a baby gate.
One of the first things we had to do when we moved into our new house was figure out how to block off the stairs. The Bit hadn’t had much experience with stairs before (at this point she’d only been walking a little over three months, which is just crazy to think about) and we certainly didn’t want her wandering between floors unsupervised.
Because our house has crazy amounts of trim, the gates had to be shimmed in to an extreme degree (thanks, sweetie!) and were always the tiniest bit precarious.
On my way down the stairs while folks were over Sunday night, I tried to open the gate at the bottom of the stairs and it fell off the wall.
Luckily I was the only person nearby and it didn’t hurt anyone or anything, but it was kind of dramatic.
The Bit is a great climber (and descender) these days, so we figured we’d just see what happens without a gate at the bottom. It sure looks weird without a gate after almost a year.
But also, there was this:
a worn spot where the gate somehow rubbed on the stair when it opened and closed. So that pretty much sealed the deal that we don’t want to put the gate back up. There’s always this one:
which will keep her from getting anywhere beyond the stairs if we don’t want her to. And we don’t want her to, because she could do a lot of damage unsupervised in our offices. And letting her play upstairs by herself would just be another sad reminder that she’s growing up fast, and I’m not ready for that yet!
