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Trouble

I just sat down to write about how Luke is getting into more trouble these days, when I looked up and saw that he had climbed onto the chair by my sewing table, gotten the scissors down, and was walking around, opening and closing them. I jumped up to get the scissors away (careful not to run, since then he would think I was chasing him and he would run away) and managed to bang my little toenail back. I put the scissors away and Luke started taking books out of the bookshelf...

This is one reason I haven't posted as many blog entries as I wish I would. (The other reasons involve laziness and reading other blogs and trying to think up comments for them...) Let me give you one more example:

We had just had the house cleaned, including the floor washed. Luke managed to climb up onto the kitchen table, upset a glass of water (getting many things on the table wet). I grabbed him off the table and walked into the kitchen to get a rag. As we passed close to a counter, Luke managed to grab a cereal box and turn it upside down. The box was mostly empty, and so crumbs and dust fell onto the ground. I put Luke down and went to get a broom, and he unloaded most of the clean silverware from the dishwasher onto the floor. All this took about 2 minutes, maybe less.

I wish to apologize again for my thoughts about parents who go crazy child-proofing their houses. My thought was, "house-proof the child, and you won't need to child-proof the house!" This is a good thought for many children. However, Luke finds ways to get into trouble that I hadn't dreamed of, and so far he is mostly uncorrectable.

His sisters help, I think, first by leaving out things that Luke shouldn't get into, and second by teaching him things. Luke was 9 months old when he learned how to open the doors in front of the stereo: Eleanor was 4 before she was interested, Amanda was 3, and I think she was the one who taught Luke. Luke is already starting to try to open doors in the house---Amanda was almost 3 before she started really reaching for the door handles (when Eleanor was that young, she lived in a house with round doorknobs that even I had trouble opening sometimes).

What do you think: is this a "boy thing" or is this a "Luke thing?" Or maybe a "third child thing?" Or maybe (probably) some of each.

Hopefully more posts will come soon...

Comments

Lenise said…
Sounds familiar! I vote for "Boy thing".

Now you know why I'm crazy!! ;)
mathmom said…
Hi Lenise! It will be interesting to see if the 3rd child has more destructive tendencies than the first two.

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