I Had a Dream

This morning at the breakfast table, Sadie shouted: "I had a dream!" Was she about to channel the late Dr. King? Nah. Perhaps it's because, as far as Sadie is concerned, Martin Luther King's dream of racial equality has been achieved with the election of her bosom buddy, Barack Obama. Or perhaps it's because Sadie is color blind when it comes to race (I sure hope this is the case!). Instead, Sadie's "I Had a Dream!" speech consisted of a tale about her falling out the window. In fact, she woke me up at 2 in the morning to tell me that she had fallen out the window. Apparently, the dream stayed with her because this morning, she told us all about it, down to the fact that she was wearing only one boot. "Where was my other boot?" she asked. Um, it was YOUR dream kid! How should I know why you were only wearing one boot?!

The truth is, if ever a child would fall out of a window in real life, it would be Sadie. This child is the reason those window safety bars were invented. She is the reason socket plugs were invented. The reason for cabinet locks. The reason for stove locks. Basically the reason for any childproofing item that exists on the market (and even some that do not!). Months before Ella started crawling, we baby-proofed the house, putting the cabinets and drawers on lock-down. Only to discover (months later when Ella was finally mobile) that Ella would never venture into any of these places. The childproofing only served to deter Dean and I from getting into the silverware drawer in a timely manner.

And then there was Sadie. The child that cut her eye on the radiators everyone warned us about even though they'd never been a problem with Ella. The child who grabs the knife sitting on the kitchen island (even though she knows better). The child who has fallen off the bed more times than I can count. The child that got into the childproof cap on the bottle of tylenol.

The other day I was flipping through Parents magazine (What is it about that magazine? It won't stop coming even though we haven't paid for it in YEARS!!) and read a warning about stocking hangers. It briefly entered my mind when we hung the stockings, so we warned both kids against pulling on the stockings, lest the heavy hangers come falling down on their hands. Want to guess what happened next? That's right--Sadie pulled on her stocking while the rest of the family was in the kitchen, and now has scabs on her nose to show for it.

I have a dream, too. It's that one day, I'll be able to leave a pair of scissors or a knife on the island (way out of Sadie's reach BTW) and know that the little scamp won't climb up onto a chair and grab one of them when I leave her out of my sight for 10 seconds.

In the meantime, we've moved the stockings out of grabbing range.