Several Small Steps for Toot!

Since Rudy's in a Big-Girl Bed these days, she's now able to get out of bed on her own. After we tuck her in at night or for her afternoon nap, or first thing in the ridiculous early morning. This means that at night, while Todd and I are on the couch and he's answering, and I'm not kidding, dozens of work-related emails, and I'm slack-jawed and then sporadically throwing my fist in the air while watching the Celtics, we sometimes hear a ruckus.

There's the pitter-patter of little feet, Beanie and Tootie feet, and then there's Marley screeching about Rudy ripping pages in a book, and then someone throwing things, and then the CD of, and I'm not kidding, songs about using the potty isn't loud enough, and eventually, I'm up there saying good night again.

Mostly, though, they get to bed and they get to sleep. But what about when they wake up in the middle of the night, and Todd and I are in that exhausted kind of parent-sleep downstairs? For the past couple of years, Marley has padded, sleepily and adorably, downstairs to pee in the wee hours. Sometimes I wake up to see it, and sometimes I don't. And yes, that's right: our home has ONE bathroom. Not three and a half or however many families of three need these days. Anyhow, the problem is, we can't gate Bean in at night, but Toot is still too wobbly a walker and especially, a stair-walker, to leave any open door to chance. Really, what we need is a magic gate that shuts itself in the middle of the night to ensure that human error is not an factor, and we can't afford that, even if such a thing exists. Todd and I have had many sensible and under-the-surface-hostile conversations about what sort of swinging gate to use upstairs. Conversations involving cost, safety, reason, and contested expertise. For a while, I was using the term GateGate, at least in my head, to describe the controversy.

For now, we're working on keeping the girls' bedroom door closed, and helping Marley develop the habit of closing the door securely behind her whenever she leaves the room. And then I asked Todd about a second banister, something we should've done a long time ago, like when we first moved here and Marley was two and still unsteady while descending stairs. And Todd stained and installed an extra piece of floorboard, and it looks so great and cute, and we all breathe easier about the event that Rudy might decide to come downstairs before one of us is there to assist her, or if the door has not completely clicked shut after Marley's trip downstairs at six in the morning. She comes downstairs with a steady hand on the custom-made Toot Banister, murmuring, "Daddy made!" in a proud little, happy little voice. And as her sweet bowed legs get stronger and longer and steadier, the gate will probably disappear, and GateGate will be a hazy blip in an mostly blemish-free administration.