February 11, 2011

Blaze has gotten into the habit of climbing over the baby gate in his door or slamming his door and banging on it at 5:15, 5:45…somewhere in that time range…every morning.

SO! We hatched a plan.

Last night when Blaze went to bed, I showed him the clock in his room. I said, “When this first number says 6 you can leave your room.” Tim went on to explain 6:30 to Blaze and we told him that’s when he could leave his room in the morning, that we would see him then.

After that, I vegged out at home while Tim drove into town and bought a second portable baby gate at Wal-Mart. We put the second gate up, above the first one in Blaze’s doorway, leaving some room for the doorknob to fit through between them.

At 6:00 a.m. Blaze awoke, threw up his door and saw the 2^nd gate. He didn’t fuss, he didn’t whine…in just a tad bit distressed voice he said, “What am I going to do? What am I going to do?” then calmly followed it up with, “Think! Think! Think!” I felt bad for him, but waited awhile before going in. When I saw through the baby monitor that he was in bed, looking at the doorway, assessing the situation. I refrained from going in there at all. At 6:30 Tim’s alarm clock went off and Blaze began knocking on our bedroom door. I went and answered it. There was my happy little Blaze smiling up at me in the hallway. Not only had he turned the hall light on before knocking, he also turned on the stairway lights. I laughed and sat down on the floor with him. I said, “Blaze! I am so surprised to see you out of your room. We need to go back into your room to change that stinky diaper. Can you show me how you got out?” He looked at me, attempted to stick his head under the gate (which could never have worked at the angle he was approaching it) and said, “Oops, I’m bigger now” and just grinned. He refused to show me how he did it. I finally just took down the lower gate and we crawled through. J I got the impression that perhaps he laid down flat on his back and scooted underneath the bottom one, but I’m not totally for sure. He really can suck in that belly. J

I am bemused by the situation, very proud of my little guy’s ability to solve a problem, but really left with two questions…did he really understand the 6:30 thing or was that an accident? And how DID he get out of that room??? Sigh…the mom may never know!

Joy