A Little Privacy, Please!

Earlier today, my 7 year old daughter was telling me how much she likes the way we rearranged the furniture in the family room, to give her her own space to play. My real intent was to baby-proof the family room for my littlest girl, with the hope of keeping her away from all of the little Barbie shoes, Polly Pocket accessories, etc. -- all sorts of delightful things that she would love to put in her mouth! I rearranged the room so that my girl has about 1/4 of the room "hidden" behind the couch, and her Loving Family Dollhouse and her Polly Pockets are all back there on a small table for her to play with. It worked great for a number of months -- we have a toybox that has blocked our baby from getting back there, BUT, last week she figured out how to climb INTO the toybox, so it is just a matter of time until she can enter into "Polly Pocket Land." On to Plan B! We have this great baby gate that my friend Chris gave us (thanks, Chrissy!!) that has 6 lengths of gate all connected. This morning, I pulled it open to block the bottom of the stairs (our family room is the downstairs of our split-level home), the toybox, and the couch because my little one is also climbing up on that to try to get into Polly Pocket Land.

We talked about rearranging the room again and just using the gate to block the toys that are potentially dangerous for our littlest girl to get into, or I had suggested moving the dollhouse and the Polly Pockets up into our older daughter's room, where her Barbie house is now located. She was not a huge fan of either of those ideas -- she likes her little "nook" hidden away behind the couch. As she said this morning, she likes to have her privacy. Then she went on to say, "You like privacy too, Mommy -- when you are on the potty!" Yes, yes I do. Thank you. I had to stifle a laugh, because I wasn't expecting her to say that! Actually, she's heard me say something similar -- every time I'm in the bathroom and she bursts in to hang out and visit! I guess the benefit of being a working mom is that I get to go to the bathroom without an audience!