The Ice Pick Incident

Beren deMotier * writer * artist * human

The Ice Pick Incident

It has been years since we decorated our home for the holidays with a human wrecking ball on the loose. Our toddler is the reason baby gates were invented, though he can be seen figuring out the locking mechanisms during his free moments, which he otherwise fills by scaring us to death.

Admittedly, the last time we had a child this age, we always knew where she was. On my hip. I carried her until she was five. Luckily, she was travel size, for my convenience. She also, in the way of the majority of girls, had more impulse-control and self-preservation instinct than both of our boys, though I do recall her taking out her fair share of breakables.

The whole “wrecking ball” phenomenon may be a birth order issue. Our older son had more common sense at this age than our present boy wonder. He figured out quickly that if you fall off the chair you are climbing on, it hurts, so perhaps you should avoid climbing it again. The middle child was too busy watching the older one to get into too much trouble. But our youngest seems to feel any pain is worth the adventure, and has shrugged off any number of bruises, abrasions, and bloody lips in his desire to know where everything in the house is located, and how to use it, because he is convinced he is as competent as any of the rest of us.

We’ve also discovered he has an amazing memory. When a visitor found herself locked out of our bathroom (she failed to try the other door to it), before I could do anything about unlocking it from the other side, our young son was off to the kitchen drawer like a shot to search for the ice pick I use to pop open the lock when I’m too lazy to go around. I’d done it once in front of him, months before, and he remembered exactly where to find the ice pick, and had every intention of getting our friend Sheila into that bathroom. I stopped him just in time as he felt his way blindly through our kitchen drawer, standing on his tiptoes.

Unfortunately, the next day he applied logic to the ice pick potential, and decided he should be able to get into the bathroom whenever he wanted to, despite our efforts to keep him out of the danger zone. He was clear across the kitchen holding the ice pick before I saw him. I whipped over, removed the ice pick from his firm grasp, showed him I was getting rid of it (so he wouldn’t rummage in the drawer looking for it), and called my wife to ask her to stop at the store for some more safety locks on the way home.

Obviously, with danger bunny on the loose, decorating for the holidays has been challenging. Especially since we do it in a big way: indoor and outdoor illumination, the freshly cut Noble, the village, the thirty-five miniature trees of assorted sizes that adorn every flat-topped piece of furniture on the first floor of our house, etc.

We considered putting the tree on a pedestal, going without lights or hanging only non-breakable ornaments, but there was a mutiny among our older offspring. A pedestal? No lights on the tree? No glass balls? You’d think we’d suggested they become Amish. They are rigid traditionalists when it comes to our family holidays. This would be the down-side of providing them with safe, predictable holidays free of trauma-drama and sudden changes of plan. If we had raised them in an atmosphere of drunken chaos, they would turn on a dime, and skip Christmas if need be, just to avoid the hassle. But no, they want their holidays the same, Thank you very much, and I worry that their future spouses will corner me in the kitchen someday and scream, “Couldn’t you have lowered the bar, woman? The holiday prep is driving me crazy! Would putting up an artificial tree have killed you?”

Naturally, if we really need to oust the lights or take down the balls, we will, we’re not totally wimpy in the parenting department, but we did choose cooler lights, and put a gate between the toddler in the kitchen and the accident waiting to happen in our dining room.

The bonus of having our human dynamo at the holidays this year is that he is new to all this. He doesn’t remember last year, and this year he understands what’s going on. Our older kids love watching him enjoy it for the first time (which is good, because at ten and thirteen, it stops being so cool to be into Christmas), and they can do the corny stuff without feeling self-conscious; reading Christmas books, watching holiday specials, and looking forward to Santa Claus and stockings.

The more cynical bonus is that he is the ideal excuse to avoid the holiday madness. There is no limit to how he can be used to reduce travel or undesired social events. No one wants a cranky toddler around who doesn’t already have one of their own, and anyone who values their valuables won’t argue with an, “I’m sorry, we can’t make it.” And if pressure is brought to bear, “You must come! All of you!” all we have to do is ask, “Did we tell you about the ice pick incident?”

And we’re off the hook.