1) Emptying out boxes of pasta onto the floor and then dragging the noodles throughout the house. Because what's the fun in keeping a mess like that contained to just one area? While pasta seems to be his favorite, he'll settle for a box of crackers or cereal if he can get his hands on it.
2) Trying to destroy our lamps. I don't know why he seems so set on breaking our lamps, but he works at it every day. Either he pulls the plugs out of the sockets and walks away with it so the lamps come crashing down or he climbs up onto the end table and bangs on the lampshades, denting and cracking them, sometimes knocking over the whole lamp, sometimes falling off the end table. I spend at least 30 minutes a day just trying to distract him from banging on the lampshades while he fights and wrestles me, desperately trying to get back up on the precarious end table.
3) Getting me to vaccuum the rugs and then not letting me vaccuum them. He will stand by the vaccuum and cry until I turn it on, and then block my path so I can't move the vaccuum. Eventually we manage to get the rugs cleaned, and then we do it again because he cries when I turn the thing off.
4) Unwrapping Christmas gifts. Believe it or not, not one of our older 3 kids ever unwrapped a Christmas gift before we told them to do so. I guess with four kids, there's bound to be a first for just about everything a child might think of to do. I had several gifts wrapped and under the tree a week ago. Now I have several unwrapped boxes under the tree and lots of wrapping paper in the recycling bin. Did I mention he also got ahold of 3 large tubes of wrapping paper and shredded them all? I think one of his gifts for Christmas is just going to be a fresh role of wrapping paper for him to play with - the only question is how to wrap it....
5) Pulling everything out of our tin foil/plastic baggie/saran wrap drawer and then emptying all the boxes of their contents. I finally gave up on everything in that drawer and stashed it away somewhere else. Not only does is it a pain trying to restuff a box full of ziploc bags, but the tin foil box has sharp edges.
6) Unrolling and ripping apart rolls of paper towels with the cat. Frankie loves unrolling toilet paper and paper towels, and he discovered that the cat shares this love. I could hear him laughing and playing with Coco the other day when I was getting something done upstairs. I thought he was just running around the island with something for the cat to chase or throwing a ball for her to chase. But no. I came down to find the kitchen floor covered in bits of paper towel from not just one but two rolls of toilet paper. He unrolled them, Coco ripped them apart. The drawer that formerly held our tin foil and baggies is now full of paper towel pieces that I use to wipe up small spills or noses. If he gets into it, he might make a mess again, but he can't do much more damage.
7) He will actually play with toys from time to time, but rarely with any toys that he can play with independently. His favorite is a jack-in-the-box, which he can get out of the box on his own. Getting it back into the box is a different matter. Fortunately, motherhood has given me a high tolerance for kids' desires for repetition so I don't mind hearing the tinkling tune of Pop! Goes the Weasel three hundred times a day.
Since we left for our Oregon trip on Frankie's first birthday, I never did get around to posting his first birthday pictures. We got lucky, and my sister generously baked a cake for us so we could celebrate Frankie's and Gabby's first birthdays together (they were born 4 days apart).
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| Birthday buddies and grandma |
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