A chip off the ole blockhead

Kye is my "easy" child. Supposedly. Tweenie was too, until she turned 8 and found her inner diva.

It seems that the hero worship Kye extends to big brother Rascal has led to some completely foreseeable, though no less unfortunate, naughtiness.

Am I indirectly calling my boys naughty?

In a word, yes. But in their defense, it's not continuous and rarely do their shenanigans converge.

I guess I've been distracted by Rascal's antics, and so only just now clued into what was likely a slow escalation of rascally behavior. Being a toddler still, Kye is fortunately too young to get really inventive. The kind of imagination that keeps me awake at night in a mother's paranoid fear has to mature first before it can hope to compete with his big brother.

The scene of the "crime". Note the proximity to the fridge (at left).

Because of this, Kye only really does one dangerous thing, and does it repeatedly. He opens the dishwasher door and climbs aboard. With his vantage point thus improved, he reaches into the cutlery basket and selects with great purpose 2 steak knives. If such are not available, paring or bread knives will serve as adequate substitutes.

He then stands up, a knife in each fist (blades pointed upward) and begins to bounce with the springiness of the door. Unable to contain his joy, he will at some point begin to shriek with delight and in doing so alert me to his activity.

The moment comes to a screeching halt, Kye is placed out of harm's way and watches regretfully as Mama stacks whatever large objects may be close at hand to barricade the dishwasher from future attempts. While Mama is distracted, Kye sneaks into the fridge, removes the French's mustard (not the dijon--only made that mistake once), and races off to a safe location where he can pry the lid open and jam the bottle into his mouth.

The knife block. Note the missing utensils. We continue our search for the stash.

The completion of a diaper cycle brings the whole episode to a close, and Mama slinks off to watch the Young and the Restless for some brain-numbing moments of relative peace.

Cluck away, you mothers-of-none. You have no idea what you're in for.