The Stories of our Lives

He started his foothold by claiming a solid part of the upstairs living room, first with the portable playpen, quickly followed by his space-eating swing. The exerciser ate another chunk of that room a little later on, and before we knew it the living room was invaded by toys, and it wasn’t ours anymore.

Through the months, Xavier’s mobility increased evermore, and from one open-area to the next - and then through doors to access closed rooms - our whole living space upstairs has become kid-safe (or safe-enough with the appropriate adult supervision) and kid-owned, in some way. This invasion has lately started down the stairs; breakables and hazardous objects are gradually being removed from the basement main room, and we, both Xavier and us, are now exploring and defining what will become middle ground between adult establishment and kid’s new amusements and limitations in the space downstairs. Pretty soon we’ll have a complete Xavier-safe house.

As our toddler started playing a little more often in the basement these days - and we never really planned to turn the upstairs living room into a playroom - we have decided, as a Christmas present and also before the arrival of baby 2, that we’ll be setting him up with a proper playroom space downstairs. It’s not to say he’ll stop playing anywhere but there, or even that toys will only be stored in this location - our months of living with him have helped us to realistically assess what our family’s needs will be here - but a “toys headquarters” doesn’t sound like a bad plan in the long run.

Not being one to begrudge being faced with a little project like this, I took out my tools and came up with a little plan that makes the best of what we already have, and selected some fun additions. The location will be pretty much right at the center of the basement’s open area, which might not sound ideal for the overall look downstairs, but which is very useful for supervision. Plus it places the playroom just before the wallpaper mural of a forest we put up, which is a fun element for it. If all goes well, we should *crossing fingers* be able to build a little play house. Otherwise we might settle on Ikea’s red kid’s tent. Anyway, here’s the plan (click to see it properly):

Now the most pressing issue is selling the big soccer table that’s taking all the space there now. Any buyers?

This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007 at 23:26 and is filed under Kids & family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.