trust exercise

Tucked behind the bathroom door is the little seat thing in which the wingpiglet could be contained up until last summer, when he had lengthened and strengthened sufficiently to be able to tip it forward. It was slightly improved by using the harness section of his reins to stop him leaning too far forward but the reins were not to hand this morning when I needed to contain him for long enough to be able to have a shower; I don't trust him enough to leave him downstairs for ten minutes, during which time he could quite easily sweep sufficient books off the bottom three shelves to form a mound large enough to climb to get at the things on the sideboard or empty the toys out of the stacking-crate thing in order to upend it to use it to climb on top of the play-oven in order to get at the things on the mantelpiece, assuming that he got sufficiently bored of climbing on the sofa to get at the lamp or climbing on the cabinet to get at the modem on top of the television and so on. Given that he demonstrated the ability to walk all the way to nursery without insisting on trying to go the wrong way or wrenching his hand free or stopping to investigate the undersides of every hedge we should soon be at the stage of being able to get him to not do things, though at the moment he's merely reached the point where he'll say his own noes after doing something we've told him to not do.

Various updates from Nicky during the day indicated that unless she started fainting or bleeding profusely she'd be kicked out before the end of the day, eventually resulting in a discharge just in time for popping straight there to pick her up after I'd collected the boy (with minutes to spare, though the only penalty appears to be mild opprobrium from the nursery staff rather than a late fee). He seemed a bit put out that he couldn't get to cuddle her properly but (at the moment) the brush-teeth read-story bag-up and put-to-sleep process is usually enough to calm him down even when he's starting melting-down a little bit in the evening. Nicky seems better than I was expecting from her descriptions and voice, even managing the unavoidable stairs to the bathroom, though I'll be working from home tomorrow to monitor her and fetch/assist/prepare as required.