State Dept Round Up: 186 of 365

So the Round Up this week is on kitchens. It is hosted by Sara at Wife-Mommy-Woman. Head on over Friday to check it out. Sorry I don't have a good pic of my kitchen. I need to recharge the batteries for my camera. My kitchen here is pretty much your standard late 80's early 90's kitchen. A bar/cupboard on one side, shelf for the microwave, lots of counter space, little garage things for the appliances with a door that goes up and down. Dark brown wood, brownish/orangeish tiles on the walls. It may be a little dated in the decor but it is very functional which is all I really care about.

Like all of the rooms in our house, it also has boatloads of storage space. All in all, it has been a great kitchen and we have loved it. My all time favorite thing though is this cupboard.

It looks like a regular cupboard from the outside but when you open it, it swings out like this. (Ignore the dirty crockpot.)

Very cool right? Well, when we first moved in, our kids amused themselves by climbing in and out of and hiding in the various closets and cupboards throughout the house. We only had our luggage and it was 100 and 50 zillion degrees outside so it was a pretty good game to keep them busy. Our then two year old was especially good at this game. She'd find a random shelf to hide on, hang out for a bit, and then start yelling "Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!" It was one of her clearest words. And we heard it often those first month or so before our HHE arrived.

One night we were having some friends over to dinner who had just arrived to post. We still didn't have our stuff so the kids were doing the usual and climbing in and out of cupboards. The 2 year old was in the kitchen with me, testing out the pantry cupboards. Since I was busy with dinner, I wasn't paying a ton of attention to her, just listening to her open and close the cupboards as I worked. Then suddenly I looked up and she had disappeared into thin air it seemed. I yelled at my husband to ask if he knew where she was. I checked the pantry cupboards, nothing. Meanwhile I started hearing a terrified little voice shrieking, "Stuck! Stuck! Stuck!" It sounded like it was in the kitchen but I had no idea where. I was frantically searching through all the cupboards again as my husband scoured the rest of the house. And then I looked over at my favorite cupboard. It looked like this:

 

No way right? I thought that there was no way she could possibly be in that one but it was the only one left. And as I yanked it open a bit, I saw this: (luckily my camera was in the kitchen so we could grab pics of her extraction)

It took us a second to get her out, mostly because we were both fighting back the urge to laugh our heads off and at the same time feeling bad that she was scared. It was so funny though that I was seriously about to lose it. I had tears in my eyes from the effort. (And yes I took pictures. Only one of us could pull her out. The other one had to, you know, direct the whole thing.) After a little maneuvering, she was out. She ran to each of us for a big hug to help her recover from the trauma. Then she slammed the cupboard shut and started chewing it out in Toddlerspeak. I am afraid to note that Mom and Dad completely broke down and laughed like crazy at this point. She never really touched that cupboard again though and the other kids gave it a wide berth too. Can't be too careful with kid-devouring cupboards.

(Thanks for hosting the Round Up Sara!  If you have a kitchen post or know of one, head over to Wife-Mommy-Woman and submit it. I noticed some new blogs this week that I am hoping to see on upcoming Round Ups. You can also host a Round Up. It looks like next week is open being hosting by Sadie Abroad. The OTP, optional talking point, is collections.  Check out the Round Up sign up on Daring Adventure for more info. For other ways to get involved/connected to other State Department bloggers, see my post on the subject. The ideas are at the end of the post.)