What goes up...

I think everyone knows when a baby comes into the house, things have to be rearranged. Furniture gets moved in, toys go everywhere, and all dangerous items have to be moved out of the reach of the lil hands. As the body that those lil hands are attached to gets more mobile and that mind gets more curious, the "danger" items have to be moved higher and higher and more into the center of tables rather than the edges. So your home ends up with not-to-be-touched items on display in oddly shaped piles. My best friend's husband calls this stuff "sit arounds," which I like. All these things do it sit there. But they're pretty. And completely non-functional.

(Disclaimer: you *may* just get annoyed one day at the piles and throw it all away...cuz I'm not organizing it...).

In addition to the "safety" reorganization that you do, your baby does some rearranging of his own. Now all the items left within his reach have been sanctioned for his touch, so he touches them all. And carries them. Room to room. And finds great new places for them. And since you have to wrestle any non-approved items from him and deal with the related "I can't live without that butter knife!" fit, you relent and let him play with whatever else he wants. Including the TV remote which you swore up, down, and sideways that you'd never do.

Let's take a quick tour of our home:
Starting in the master bathroom, we have a wooden candle holder on the floor, Mama's toothpaste in the shower (yes, we each have our own toothpaste due to an unfortunate incident in college which ended up with my needing a fake front tooth), the pull-stick from our drapes leaning against the wall, Mama's hairbrush on the floor (but it is SO cute to watch him try to brush his hair!)...moving to the bedroom we have one shoe on the dresser, the Who Says Quack book next to the TV, Dad's alarm clock on the bed...we get downstairs and find Dad's toothpaste on the kitchen counter, Mama's sunglasses in the wagon, and...where the heck is my right sandal?

Found it -- on the bathroom sink, of course. I need a map.