Mr. Messy

Little boys are different than little girls. Jack is a train wreck and neither Misty or I recall either of the girls behaving with these manners. My favorite is the cabinets.

A few months ago I put the child safety tabs on the cabinet doors. Jack was ferociously unhappy when he discovered he was no longer able to open the cabinets, pull his favorite stuff out and throw it on the floor. He screamed, yelled, and whined a little when he discovered his new limitation.

Every weekend morning I'll fix breakfast, and Jack systematically goes to each of the cabinet doors and pulls/pushes the doors in and out, in and out. Repeatedly. Repeatedly. Repeatedly. It makes the loudest noise. He's broken one of the child fasteners, he's shaken the screw out of one of the pulls (the wood the screw fastens is stripped).

He broke the plastic off a pull drawer underneath the sink. Then, he finally sits down he comes to the drawers that I haven't locked. He rummages through and pulls out all the Ziploc bags, all the cups and throws them on the kitchen floor. That's on Saturday. Sunday: repeat.

He pulled down the candy bowl for Halloween and pulled out some Nerds candies, chewed, drooled on the box enough where he could pull the candy out, dispense on the floor, and proceed to eat at his leisure.

When he eats, he can't just eat the food. He takes it out of his mouth, looks at it, squishes it some more in his hand, then will either 1) put it back in his mouth and finish eating or 2) throws it as far as he can.

That's the other thing, the throwing. He will pick up a toy. Then walk around at a fast pace with both hands above his head. He grunts in his 15 month old, viking/pirate voice and then catapults the toy as far as he can. It doesn't have to be a toy, even. He loves to throw any number of things.

He's not afraid of mud, I think the more the better. Last time it rained and dried enough we were outside and he is a magnet to puddles, muddy dirt, can't get enough of it.