don't turn your back

There comes a day in every little boy's life when he feels that he must make mischief in order to feel complete. And after that first day, mischief days happen with increasing frequency as the boy grows and learns and explores new territory and re-explores old territory with a gained height of half an inch. Today was a mischief day, and Dennis did some menacing at Gran's house this afternoon.

He is not bad. He is curious. And he's fast! He did so many wonderful things today, like waiting at the bottom of the staircase for me before he ascended to great heights. He doesn't just take off and run up the stairs--he makes sure that I see where he's going and that I have time to get there and follow him up. He stands on the first step until I get there and give him the go ahead to climb. I think that is a very wonderful thing. He also has been reaching up for a hand when going down a step and when he wants to get down from a tall chair. He waits for help rather than tumbling down. Another very wonderful thing.

But there was a moment when Mommy reached an extreme frustration point, but fortunately I saw the humor in the situation and quickly managed to laugh it off. The phone rang and it was David, and while I was hanging up the phone from talking to him, Dennis managed to empty a bag of cat food onto the carpet in Gran's den. The dog, the cat, and Dennis immediately pounced on the spoils (hey, free snacks!), and I ran to intervene before that little hand managed to get a Tender Vittle into that little mouth. This was funny, if messy, and I might have been okay if the rampage had ended here. It didn't.

While I was scooping cat food up from the carpet and back into the cat food bag (she's a cat, she can eat off the floor, so she can eat food that briefly visited the floor), Dennis managed to get into the bathroom and I turned around to see him merrily splashing his hands in the toilet. So far about 30 seconds had elapsed since I hung up the phone. I left the remaining cat food for the dog and cat to clean up since they were eating it as fast as I was cleaning it anyway. I scooped the baby up and took him to the sink to wash his hands, and somehow he managed to splash around and soak us both. I needed to get him dry and change his clothes, and when I went to find the diaper bag, he squirmed away and went running through the house at full speed, wet (but fortunately not naked--he saves those moments for home) and giggling. I caught him, scooped him up in one arm, gathered the diapering supplies in the other hand and got back in the den just as I heard Gran coming in from outside and saying "What is this on the carpet?". I explained, and she checked out the puddle we left in the bathroom, and then she helped me by entertaining Dennis while I changed him because he was really trying hard to escape from the Evil Clean Diaper. He bit the clean diaper and tossed it around a bit before I got it into position, and he might have been a little more fractious than he was if I hadn't picked up his Moo Baa La La La book and began fanning his privates dry with it. He found this highly amusing. He already loved books even before we found this new thing that they can do!

He had many moments of pure sweetness today, as always, but those things are harder to remember than the things that I had to clean up after! The pictures show him discovering a new way to play with his Tonka truck first thing this morning. I'm glad we got a picture, because he fell out right after the picture was taken and he might climb in it again. He wasn't hurt, of course, but he was mightily offended that the truck would just flip over sideways like that with no provocation whatsoever. Gravity lessons are often the most painful kind to learn.

Gran and I spent the day working on getting a playroom ready for the grandchildren, and we are looking forward to having a safe baby zone where we can put his toys and let him run free and play. We still have a couple of days of work left, but we have made definite progress. It's always fun to visit Gran's house because she has so many interesting things around for Dennis to play with. Things like important papers, staplers, pens, markers, picture frames, neat breakable objects, computers, cords, bowls of dog food and cat food, etc.... It will be great to have a room where we don't have to chase him constantly and where he can have a sense of freedom.

Important first: we found a bit of green crayon in his diaper this morning! He ate the tip of a crayon while we were waiting on dinner last night, and it has now safely made it back out of his system only to face burial in the diaper pail. Dare we hope that this will be the only crayon he eats? Time will tell.