My little Monkey

I am inspired by my friend Mindee's Blog :http://www.ourfrontdoor.us/index.html. Her post (http://www.ourfrontdoor.us/files/c4e9e7170a52a8d96756dac1da99c769-150.html). was about her 8th grade daughter. But she can hear her parents laughing at the revisitation of her young self upon her as a parent. I am certain I hear the same thing with my second son.

For one, he looks alarmingly like I did at his age. See the middle picture-it was from the 70's of my sister and me. Yes, this means I resembled a boy during my childhood-not the other way around. I was never a very girly girl. I am still not. In addition to the "mini me" appearance, this child has the same wanton disregard for neatness, food, and gravity as I did. I recall never being able to sit still. And, just like him, I certainly had it in for defying convention. I was the second born-same sex as the first, just like him.

Still, though, I have to draw the line at some of his recent antics. As early as 16 months, he was climbing out of his crib. He walked at about 11 months. It would have been sooner as he tried at 10 months but I didn't realize he was wearing shoes 2 sizes too small-see the blog on my other son for an explanation http://tcyarbs-talkingtomyself.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-does-it-bother-me-so-much.html- As soon as he got in the right size-he walked and never stopped moving!

He has climbed our overboard playset in the backyard since he was 18 months old. We are talking rock wall-dangling off the rope ladder and dropping over to the slide (about 20 feet in the air).

This child is not for the faint of heart. He climbed a solid oak dresser at about 2-creating stairs by pulling all the drawers out. Once on top, he had a foot in each of the top drawers and was rocking until it fell. The only thing that kept his incredibly heavy item from not crushing him was that my bed broke its fall. He never sits in a chair-he generally straddles a couple a time, and leans them back to create his own little obstacle coarse at the dinner table. He rides down our stair railings, hangs from his ceiling fan ( I am NOT kidding), stacks very unstable items on top of each other to reach for things I have put up high. He gets into cleaning products and drains spray bottles, has shattered our clock off the wall-and taken out the light switches below it on its way down, wrote all over my leather car seats with pen, regularly TP's the bathroom with an entire roll of toilet paper. He can make a mess eating a tic tac, he somehow destroyed our cable box the other night, he has shocked himself on electrical outlets, he loves to dump things out-for no apparent reason. He thinks chocolate is a food group. Often how he accomplishes some of these things is a mystery to us. I still don't know how the cable box got so messed up. In short, this child EXHAUSTS me. This is just the tip of the iceberg with him.

You know the saying-just let him fall and he will learn. This does not apply to my youngest son. He just thinks he will master it next time. Now, to his credit, he does have remarkably good balance. He is able to pull off a lot of these stunts with minimal bodily harm. But it still scares me to death when I hear a thump and he is not in my immediate sight. His incredible balance and physical acumen are only missing a huge compliance component. The child is as non-conforming as they get. I long to put him in an organized sport or activity, but every time I have tried, he mostly just protests and refuses to participate. He is as headstrong as he is mischievous.

I keep thinking he will outgrow these things, if he lives long enough. I keep this blog as a record for him to have when the same curse Mindee touched on visits him. He is guaranteed to have a moment with his own offspring that makes him reflect back on the havoc he wreaked on his own parents!