I am very grateful that my job allows me to work from home in certain situations. For an example, when I have a doctor’s appointment at an odd time, like ten in the morning. Instead of making the thirty to forty min trek to work, work for an hour, and then make the trek back home, I can stay at home, get something accomplished and then head into work after the appointment. Another example is when our poor puppy, Missy, has to have surgery for her tumors. I did not know that Boxer dogs were prone to have so many tumors that can lead to cancer. We take her tumors very seriously, as she is considered one of our children!
The days of working from home have become fewer and fewer after my son was born. Mostly, due to the fact that watching a baby while trying to focus on a computer screen is damn near impossible.
However, this morning, Nana sounded like she was on her death bed so I decided to try my luck. My son has become quite independent since he learned to crawl. My first task was to find a way to contain him to the living room. Now, our house has a 60 inch doorway between our living room and kitchen / dining room. Granted, we have not looked very hard, but we have yet to find a baby gate that stretches the full length. Our son has recently found out that he loves playing with cabinets and Missy’s dog food. Now, if we have yet to find a baby gate for our doorway, do you think we have child proofed our house at all? Nope. Therefore, my baby gate consisted of three dining room chairs stretched across the gap. He loves playing on the chairs and has yet figured out how to crawl through them (However, he did manage to get Tonka truck stuck under it). Problem solved!
Next, I quickly discovered that anything on the floor is his territory, which gives him a right to play with it. My fun, bright, newly painted yellow computer desk is not big enough for me to stretch out my many binders of tax related information. Therefore, when I no longer needed it, I threw last year’s binder on the floor by my feet. Apparently the brightly colored guitar that makes endless noises or the John Deere Tractor is just not as much fun as the new black binder on the floor. However, he quickly learned that Canada tax returns do not provide high quality entertainment. Never the less, I had to pry it out of his hands before he managed to cover the pages in slobber or left over peaches.
Last thing I want to hear while working at home is hearing nothing at all. That is when I know he is up to no good! When this moment happened, I looked to my left to see if he was still playing with his toys. Nope. I look to my right and find him by the stairs. Now, if the rest of our house is not baby proof, do you think our stairs are? It actually does not matter if we did have a baby gate on the stairs because he has not found the stair opening yet. From our living room, you can see the stairs that go up to the second floor. The stair boards stick out from the wall about an inch or two. These stair boards that stick out have become his new favorite past time. What he likes to do is see how far he can climb up the outer part of the stairs while still touching the ground. Normally he makes it to the third stair before he falls down and starts back over from stair one.
This morning though, was a different story. He was still on the outside of the stairs, but he managed to get his arm twisted between the railing and the stair board above. Instead of crying to let me know he was stuck, he proceeded to twist his body around and dig the arm deeper in. My initial reaction was to say his name in a manner I was hoping to come across as “super mom to the rescue!” Apparently, it sounded like he was in trouble. He jumped, jerked his body around, yanked his arm free and started crying.
All of this happened before 10:30 in the morning. At this moment, I fed him a bottle, rocked him to sleep with my left arm and used my right hand to navigate through accounting information on the computer. I was very thankful that my husband was able to come home at one o’clock to take over little man duties so I could make progress on my work to-do list!
