The Hard Room and The Soft Room

Jessica (our 2-year-old) has quite the system in place for remembering her current location.

The family room, which currently isn't so much a family room but a massive firetrap of plastic toys, is known as "the hard room".

The living room, (or as I call it, the Cheerio-laden-TV-slugfest-room) is known as "the soft room".

Why they are called the Hard Room and the Soft Room is quite simple, really. The hard room has this matted down thin berber carpet, and the soft room has a normal higher-pile carpet. Hard, soft. toddler logic.

So naturally, we dramatically messed with that logic this weekend when we completely emptied out the hard room of all possessions, as the walls are about to be demolished. We spent all morning Saturday emptying out the room, and Jessica never noticed as she was ensconced in Berenstain Bears on Noggin in the soft room. When it was all done, we called her in to inspect.

"Jessica, c'mere!"

"mkay." (pitter patter, pitter patter. Queue the sudden look of astonishment)

"Where my toys??"

"We emptied out the hard room so we can renovate."

"You bloke the hard room?" (that's how she pronounces "broke")

"Yes, the hard room is broken."

"The deck is bloken too!"

"Yes, the deck is bloken too. But guess what. When the renovation is done, this will become the soft room, and the OTHER room will be the hard room!"

"Woah, wait a minute dad. Yer totally messing with my head now. I mean, don't do that, don't completely blow my mind like this. I work long and hard to get a handle on my whereabouts, and you come in here and completely screw up the feng shui of it all. How can you do that to a little toddler like myself and expect that my chakra won't be completely misaligned? I need to take a moment."

(pitter patter, pitter patter). Back to Berenstain Bears on Noggin.