This story from the NY Times today is all too familiar. Now that T is 20-months-old, and an excellent sleeper to boot, M and I have a safe span between 7 pm and 7 am to make about as much noise as we'd like. That said, 20 months is only 15 months older than 5 months, which has not been long enough for amnesia to set in. T was a hard infant and his sleep was often very hard won. The prospect of it being wrecked by a dropped pot lid is still cringe worthy all these months later. We did not make as fancy dinners as these folks when T was a 5-month-old, but we did use a lot of their techniques - initially in a one bedroom apartment and then, once T was about three months old, in a three bedroom house. Here were our favorite "silent chef" techniques:

1) Make as much of dinner early in the day as possible
2) Work slowly to limit dropped items or clanging pots on stove burners
3) Only make meals that can be prepped ahead and reheat well
4) Make double recipes of some things so you can just defrost and re-heat on really hard days
5) Know when to bag it and order pizza (but stash your dog in the basement before the delivery guy comes so he won't bark!)