Our Wild Man

I've always known Ian was going to be our wild child, even before he was born and I felt him doing his in-utero calisthenics.  But I didn't truly understand the scope of his wildness until the last few weeks.  During the school year, he spreads his crazy antics out amongst his three caregivers: Daddy in the morning, our nanny in the afternoon, and Mommy in the evening.  Now that I've been out of school for the summer, I'm starting to experience the full spectrum of this wild child's ways from morning until night.  To watch him (and keep him safe) throughout the day is both exhausting and hilarious.  Here's just a sampling from the last few weeks:

At the playground, he is never shy about climbing everything on his own.  He scurries up to the top of any structure as fast as he can.  And he has no fear about coming back down on his own either.  I constantly keep a close eye on him because he has no healthy fear of heights and would walk off the edge of a cliff without blinking.

Ian hates to be slowed down, which means he especially hates to have his diaper changed because it means he's out of the action for at least 30 seconds, much too long in his opinion.  When I have all three kids outside (we occasionally watch another little girl), I can't really haul them all back inside to change a diaper, so I sometimes change him on a blanket in the yard.  When my diaper houdini escapes my grasp, this is the result.  Fortunately for him, he was wearing a onesie that day, so his future girlfriend won't see his full moon running down the driveway when we share family photos.

I know what you're thinking: "Aww, what a sweet boy, helping Mommy with the gardening."  Well, unfortunately, I didn't grab a photo of the next event because I was too upset.  A few minutes later, I turned around for a moment only to turn back and find that Ian had ripped every last blossom off of my newly planted marigold.  There he was sitting in a pile of orange flowers, pleased as punch by his accomplishment.  My gardening woes didn't end with my marigolds.  Ian has also taken a liking to all the fruit being produced by our garden.  This was his first offense:

No, that's not a jalapeno.  It's supposed to be a bell pepper, but it's life was cut short.  Since then, we've had two more tomato casualties at the hands of this mischievous little boy.

 

 Ian's new favorite activity is climbing...kitchen chairs, the couch, the coffee table...it's all fair game.  He's starting to get very sneaky too.  He's figured out that if he pushes chairs and stools around the house, he can use them to get to all the forbidden places he's never been allowed to go.  In this case, the music table was the perfect tool for reaching his beloved "nonnies" while Mommy was trying to wrangle freshly bathed kiddos for PJs and bedtime.

Along with "nonnies", Ian also has a strange love affair with vaseline.  The child is obsessed with the stuff!  The only time in my life that I've ever had to call poison control was a few months ago when he grabbed a tub of the stuff, took it behind the T.V. and started to chow down.  Since that day, he has done everything in his power to get at the tub of vaseline.  I'm usually on high alert when Ian's not in the room, but the other night I was busy with laundry when I heard Molly yell, "Ian, Ian, Ian!!!  NO! NO! NO!".  I ran into the bathroom to find this:

He was covered from head to toe.  At least he wasn't eating it.  After a second bath, I still put a very greasy boy to bed and it showed the next morning.  He woke up looking like this:

 Because I'm allergic to most skin-care products and chapsticks, vaseline is one of the only things I can use.  Therefore, I have a few containers around the house in, what I thought were, unreachable places.  Guess I'll have to start locking it up with the cleaning products!

 Another new favorite game is what I call "Stuck in the Bed".  We've never used a changing table with Ian, but instead just change him on a towel on our bed.  Lately, he has found that this is a great time to run away from Mommy or Daddy and slide himself feet-first into the crack between the mattress and the headboard. (Are you noticing a theme?  Diaper change = BAD.  Getting into trouble = GOOD :-)

 For some reason, he LOVES being in that little crevice.  Once he has himself good and stuck, he likes to duck behind the pillows and play peek-a-boo.  Check out the video of this silly little boy.

But despite all his antics and occasionally making me want to pull my hair out, he has the biggest, sweetest heart.  He loves to snuggle with his Mommy, wrestle with his Daddy, and gives hugs to his big sister.  This little boy has stolen my heart...even if he sometimes makes it skip a beat.