24 pounds of TROUBLE!

If there was ever a boy who was put on this earth to keep me on my toes, I am pretty sure its my baby boy!

We are in that stage of discovery and independence, and while this is a great from a one year old's perspective, its wearing on my last nerve as a mother!

 It seems every time I turn around he is into something... I think he believes he was put on this planet to identify the baby loop holes in our house - and trust me, there are many of them!

I guess the biggest challenge for me is believing that he can and will get into something each and every time I am not all up in his grill. His older brother was not that kind of a kid, and still isn't. E's level of mischief is actually pretty pathetic as it isn't worth charting on the holy graph of mischief. However, I can see that H is making up for that.

I try not to compare my boys... because while they are brothers, they are very different personalities and as such require different parenting techniques. But I can't help it! For E, raising your voice just an octave or two got his attention and deterred him from any further destruction, but for H, raising your voice three octaves (or down right screaming your head off) doesn't do anything but encourage him to continue his actions. Once he has it locked in his mind that he wants to do something, I have yet to discover a technique that will change his mind.

This week, H discovered that he's tall enough to pull the door handle open that leads to the basement stairs. When E was in this stage, we kept the door to the basement shut and that was the end of it. We actually only installed one baby gate in the whole house at the top of the second floor stairs for E. But now with H, its a different story. He insists on opening the basement door and I can't trust that he won't instinctively go head first down the stairs, so we took new measures to ensure that doesn't happen - a second gate. 

He's not pleased about it, but at least I can safely contain him to the first floor and do so with peace of mind. Of course... restricting him only triggers the 'what kind of trouble can I cause under her nose' button, and it turns into issues like these... 

But such is life... with a busy boy!

He's not all trouble all the time, every now and again, we are pretty pleased with his actions... like last weekend, before the baptism, he decided to take his first unassisted steps... in the presence of Grandma & Grandpa B too!



We love him to pieces... we just hope, like all parents of a busy boy, that its JUST A PHASE!