Q is for...

Quiet.

One of the things we learn as parents is that if it’s too quiet, the kids are up to something!  I’m not the only mother who has walked into a quiet room to discover a toddler with a book in one hand and a marker in the other.  Or a pair of scissors in hand and locks of hair on the floor!  With our two youngest, sometimes the discoveries were a bit more upsetting (I’ve mentioned what, um… natural substances, shall we say? kids can ‘paint’ with…)

So we learn to be cautious and not take a perceived peacefulness for granted.  Peep around the doorway, look out the window, and most of the time we can walk away with a sense of relief that all is well.  Nothing untoward is happening, no messes are in the offing, no disasters about to occur.

Now that the kids are older, we have a different view.  Adolescents are loud, as a rule – at least ours are!  I still check on them when it’s quiet, but usually it means they’re doing… nothing.  When it’s ‘too quiet’, I usually find the kids reading, or listening to an audio book on an mp3 player.  Does that mean I’ll quit checking?  No, in fact, just last week I walked over to Girlie, who was looking up Pokemon games on the computer, and a “your anti-virus software may be out of date” ad had just popped up.  Thankfully, I was right there to remind her never to click on anything like that!

I appreciate quiet more than just about anyone I know.  We didn’t know enough about home design to realize the drawbacks of the floor plan we chose, but considering the space we had available I’m not sure it would have mattered.  One of the best things about this house is that the dining area next to the kitchen is adequate, so the formal dining room at the front of the house is mine.  It’s control central, and tends to collect everyone’s business, but I can do what I want with the space.  It houses all my yarn stash and other knitting and craft supplies, as well as my ‘office’.  We may yet put a door on this room, but for now, I only share the space with the very quietest folks…