Things we have not taught RR to do:
Choose her own clothes
Open the refrigerator to find food
Go up or down steps without hand-holding
Build towers/stack cups
Turn on the TV/computer/iPad
Things RR has learned to do on her own that make us fear for the future:
Brandish a yardstick like a sword.
Add.
Toss a ball like a pro baseball player.
Skydive from the top of the couch onto the cushions (mostly).
Things we taught RR to do that we now regret:
Use a doorknob.
At least once a day our child runs, cackling, into her room and slams the door. I cannot WAIT until she’s 16. Usually, she plays in there contentedly until we fetch her out for supper or to go to the park or just to be a regular sociable human being because she’s cute and we miss her awesomeness. But sometimes, she wants to play an endless game of “I shut myself into my room and now I’m trapped forever ohmygodSAVEME!” Which, did you know? That is totally my favorite game.
So we told her how to open the door. Everyone was amazed. I was amazed because I didn’t have to show her, only describe where to put her hand, how to hold it and what to do next. It was like she was the bomb squad and I was that helpless specialist who can’t get there in time. D was amazed because one minute our daughter was on one side of the door yelling MAAAAAMAAAAA and the next she had popped out into the hall convulsing with hysterical laughter. RR was amazed because THE WORLD IS ALL MINE!
Yesterday morning, RR opened the bathroom door while my wife was showering, sauntered in, grabbed her glasses and twisted them into something resembling a sick slinky. As I came running from the other room to intervene, I thought, my kid isn’t always a figure-it-out kid, but she is a fast learner, a daredevil and a handful. And I think we’ve created a monster.
Filed under: Third Year | Tagged: cute? check., introducing rr |
Counting Chickens 
Hee hee hee 🙂 The joys of parenthood. But that day she can get up and pour her own bowl of cereal will make it all worth it.
Noah’s been opening doors for a while now – he figured out by watching us. Fun. We got the safety cover things that go over the door knob that adults can still open the door – but thankfully so far he can’t. Because yes, opening and closing doors is the funnest!
He also loves to run as fast as he can down the hallway and faceplant into the luv sac bean bag chair! He’ll do this for fifteen minutes or so until he’s breathless.
We used the safety cover thing on our bathroom door to keep our toddler out when we went through that phase. She barged in on a friend of ours once, proceeded to sit down on her stool next to them and struck up a conversation while they were uhm, having a moment.
Sea and I are making improvements to the room that will one day be a kid’s room. Among those improvements is a new doorknob. We spent a long time debating whether to get one that was lockable from the inside, worried about the bratty teenager who is somewhere in our future. We did get one that locked, in the end, but made sure there was an effective safety release on the outside.
How long ’til RR figures out that doors can be locked/blocked? Not long, I’d wager.
Our handles are fairly old fashioned. If you press the entire knob and turn, it locks the door. If you jiggle it at all, it unlocks. I’m debating whether this is a good enough solution (since I think she could clearly unlock it without even trying) or whether we should upgrade to something else. Our neighbors installed ones that locked from the outside as a last ditch effort to keep their kids in during supervised nap time.
We have not taught Critter how to turn doorknobs yet, but I suspect he’ll figure it out all on his own, sooner that we might wish. And then we will all be doomed. (Or something.)