A Nightmare in Prune Juice

"The fitful chaos that underlies the seemingly normal life first fully manifests in dreams."
          From - The Idiot's Guide to Dream Analysis and Pinball Repair
          By - Froid, Bally, and Williams 

On each of the past three nights I've woken from the same nightmare.  It's rare I remember my dreams at all, let alone experience and remember the same one three nights running.  In the dream I rise from my bed and then shuffle to the bedroom door.  Despite the dark and my missing glasses, I can see clearly.  The bedroom door pulls back slowly, quietly, so as not to wake the baby, and I step into the hallway.  That's when I see them.  Everywhere.  The entire hall, to a height of 3 feet from the floor, is splattered with purple-grey hand prints.  They are unmistakeably Mimi's.  And the stain: a malevolent mixture of apple and prune juice.  I step into the bathroom, grab a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser, wet it, and re-enter the hallway.  Just as I kneel to begin scrubbing, I wake up. 

I am not kidding.  It sounds ridiculous, I know, but each night it's the same and each night I wake up considerably frightened.  The anxiety that naturally comes from living with a toddler in a rental property is, I'm sure, partially to blame.  But there must be more to it than that for these dreams to be registering as actual nightmares. 

In response to my last blog a friend shared some valuable advice, which I'll summarize here: Don't buy anything nice until the youngest kid is 16.  This makes perfect sense, but we already have some nice things in the house -  piano, stereo, leather chairs and couch, laptops - all of them at toddler level.  And Mimi, who is ever-more adventurous, is also becoming an ever-greater threat.  I think I've found the cause of my anxiety. 

Hoping to find a way to sleep through the night, I've been wracking my brain for some kind of solution.  I have a couple ideas I'd like to share, but I need more help!

1.  Set a few very clear and easy to follow ground rules
This came out of a conversation with my sister about our childhood visits to the Hallmark store.  Though we could both read, and the establishment was clearly marked "Hallmark," it was never called as such.  In perpetuity it will been known as "The Breakable Store."  Despite the sytax (the store itself wasn't breakable, just everything inside), the moniker worked rather well. 

Each time before we entered, my mother would take my sister and I aside and say, "Remember.  Everything is breakable in here.  You can't touch anything." 

"What about the cards?" we'd ask.

"You can't touch them either, at least when you're in the store.  Hallmark mixes the store air with a special chemical that bonds to the hands of little kids.  This makes the cards explode when naughty children touch them.  It's just like that chemical they put in the pool to catch kids who pee."

"What about the staff?"

"They're fragile, too.  Highly strung with brittle egos.  And bad hips.  So, again, don't touch anything."

Naturally, this simple rule wouldn't work at home.  But it might work, eventually, for certain things in the home, like the stereo.  I suppose I'll just have to wait until Mimi gets a bit older.  Still, I think the concept of having a few, clear rules that are easy to follow will make a difference. 

2.  I finally know what a den is for!
We don't really have space for a den right now (the sun room might do in a pinch) but regardless, I think I've finally discovered their purpose: keeping important/breakable stuff out of the hands of children.

By setting aside an entire room, the "hallmark" practice becomes much easier to implement.  "Don't touch anything in the music room," or "Don't go into the den" are both pretty easy to follow.  Of course, with a scant 1,200 square feet, this approach is rather hard to implement in our current digs. 

For the time being, I suppose I'll just have to raise what I can out of toddler reach, set guidelines I can keep with Mimi, and continue to be vigilant. 

I'm worried, though.  Mimi's already taken to wearing ball caps backwards.  She'll be a full-blown juvenile delinquent before I know it.  And I have it on good authority that three year olds with criminal records are particularly hard on furniture.