It is always a victory for a parent when a child puts herself to sleep... especially at bedtime. That victory seems somehow diminished when they go to sleep inside a cabinet and have to be tediously extricated from its depths.
We have a narrow cabinet that we have long since abandoned as a storage location. It has been left available for those occasional moments when our girls need alone time with the high demand toy of the day. They love that cabinet! I cannot express to parents of multiples how many times one empty cabinet keeps all the other cabinets from expelling their contents in a flurry of flour and pot lid thunder. We have safety latches on our cabinets, but we all know that periodically there is born a child gifted in wreaking mayhem and skilled at overriding child safety protocols. With triplets you have three tries to make sure you get one capable of such feats. Our little curly headed menace is really a sweetheart deep down and so she uses her powers for good. A modern day Robin Hood, she opens cabinets and distributes snacks, new 'toys,' and anything else her poor sisters seem to stand in need of.
Sometimes I do feel like Prince John cutting off supply lines to a populace that thinks they are in constant crisis, but we have battled for every inch of kitchen that is currently possessed by cooking paraphernalia. Our lower drawers are all disassembled and taking up valuable storage space that they should have been providing. (Low drawers are stairs!) Our fridge must be arranged in a very specific way to avoid broken pickle jars and sticky jam attacks. The cabinet was our largest and most rewarding sacrifice. It has, in essence, brought peace to the land.
