The Boy Foot.

This morning, Friday, SG went into the bathroom while CW was showering. He did stuff. Very quietly, he did stuff. When she exited the shower, CW discovered a little brother who'd painted all of the nails on his right foot with my nail polish. As some of you already know, the boy loves nail polish. It's mildly disturbing, and extremely hilarious because in ALL other ways he's SUCH. A. BOY.

So, this morning, he apparently decided to go into my nail polish drawer (in the bathroom) and pick out the perfect color for his toes. Today's perfect color? "You're such a Kabuki Queen" by OPI. It's a beautiful watermelon-y pink. And it's now all over his little boy toenails. Daddy explained, or tried to explain, that boys don't paint their nails with polish, let alone PINK polish. We've all jokingly referred to his pink-toed-foot as his girl foot today, but he insists that the pink one is his boy foot and the foot with the au naturel (sp?) nails is his girl foot. *snicker*

It was quiet. Too quiet.

When CW and I left at 6pm, Matt and SG were in the shower. When we got back at 8pm, I noticed through the window that Matt was sitting at his computer. I grabbed our stuff and went up to the door (CW went to the curb to grab the recycling container). The storm door was locked (which is normal - to keep SG in the house), so I banged on the door with my foot. Nothing. Did it again - also nothing. After the third time Matt opens the door and the sits back down on the stairs to get his shoes on, because, "He got out. He's probably down at the girls' house."

Matt ran out the front door, and I went upstairs to kick at all of the blanket lumps on the floor to make sure he wasn't hiding from us, and I turned up nothing. Matt was back and on his way into the backyard when I got back downstairs. The gate hadn't been relocked that morning after recycling went out. He did notice SG at the playground while he was standing on the deck, though, so we did at least know where he'd gone at that point.

On our way out between our fence and our neighbor's fence to the playground, we stumble across a whole bunch of crap. There was a weird dustpan-shovel-type-thing, a 6 or 8 foot long 2x4, our bike pump and an old tomato cage, among other things. We stopped and stared at it all, completely perplexed.

We identified as definitively ours the bike pump and the tomato cage, but couldn't figure out how the wind had blown them off of their perches. And couldn't figure out the other stuff either, it could be ours, but was so nondescript I couldn't say yes or no. Matt shook himself out of his confusion and went out to call to SG , who thankfully responded to us and came back immediately. He'd been playing with his friends. 8)

He was confined to his room for a bit after that, and the rest of the story came out in bits and pieces (and I'm still learning as I write this):

They went to the store, came home, Matt was making dinner and SG went to play out in the backyard. He came in and out, Matt checked on him periodically, and eventually he just wasn't there when Matt checked on him. Matt walked down the street to a particular house whose occupants SG adores, and found his trike on the sidewalk in front of the house. He was inside - he claims that the mom opened the door and let him in ("Mama's place has the microwave down low!" He's still ticked at us for putting the microwave over the stove.)

SG had a fit about being dragged home, and threw himself on the couch. He didn't want dinner, so Matt was eating his dinner at his computer when it occurred to him (at about the point when CW and I pulled into the parking space) that it was quiet. Too quiet.

So, it turned out through questioning and puzzling that he' hadn't gone through the gate this time. He'd gone over the fence. He'd pushed his trusty Cozy Coupe up against the fence and climbed up on it until he managed to get to the top of the fence and the weird lean-to thing, constructed by the previous owners between the fence and the shed. Once up there, he seems to have had a ball throwing stuff that was up there down onto the ground outside of our fence - the crap we'd come across before and wondered how the wind had blown it all down. The bike pump in particular was up on the roof of the shed - far enough away from him that I'm fairly certain he had to climb up onto the roof in order to retrieve it for ejection from the yard.

At some point he got bored with chucking inanimate stuff over the fence, and chucked himself over, so he could go play on the playground. He claims that he broke bones, but there's NO evidence of ANY pain ANYWHERE on him. Not even a scratch on the knees. Wow. There was much discussion regarding him needing to tell us when he's going to leave, not going over the fence, etc.

Thursday morning the discussion continued. Sort of. He apologized and informed Matt that he wouldn't try to escape again, but that we couldn't keep him "trapped" in the back yard anymore.

Space Invader

So yeah, yesterday was one of those days. Matt was ready to start drinking at 6am, since the boy wouldn't leave him alone and kept running up to stick his fingers under Matt's arms and tickle him. This makes for either an exceptionally punchy and giggly Daddy, or an exceptionally crabby Daddy. Thankfully yesterday was only Punchy Daddy. CW was off at school (as she is most days), and SG was in full-on Space-Invaders mode. For those of you who've not heard this particular description of SG's antics: He will manage to hop/run sideways frantically while waving his hands back and forth above his head. The effect is such that it is greatly reminiscent of the surviving ranks of Space Invaders when they start speeding up and are about to land on your pitiful little ship's head. He was doing this dance in laps around the house - not abnormal, but still FUNNY.

At one point I went upstairs and discovered that he'd tried to get into our bedroom again. Even though the door was still locked, and as such completely un-breached, there was a clue. Sitting in front of the door was not ONLY his desk chair (an old windsor-back kitchen chair), but one of his little kid Ikea chairs stacked on the bigger chair's seat in an (I'd assume) vain attempt to gain some more height and reach the key on top of the molding. It was something like this (this is what I found today, Friday):

At some other point during the day Matt discovered SG sitting in the little hallway between the Kitchen and living room, attempting to get a toy open with a pair of scissors. He'd gotten the scissors by stacking two of his step stools one on top of the other, and climbing up to the counter by the sink, and getting into the cabinet over the sink that holds the scissors. All of this was somehow accomplished without Matt noticing him. Boy has some Mad Ninja Skillz, huh? Or Punchy Daddy was just SO focused on his computer screen (and work) that he completely failed to notice the movement in his peripheral vision.

None of this boded well (in hindsight) for what occurred later in the evening when Maddie and I were gone for a mere two hours...

I shouldn't have rearranged the furniture.

I got really productive two Fridays ago - always a bad idea. I vacuumed and floor-cleanered the floors downstairs, and moved a bunch of furniture around to make the living room work better, what with the treadmill being in here now.

At first he was just delighted with the changes, sitting in all of the newly moved furniture, observing the world from new vantage points. Then it began. I'd removed from his possession a pair of American Flags because he was using them as weapons, and put them up on top of the wall unit. This was Saturday or Sunday. Monday evening, CW and I got home, and here's SG running around with the flags again.

"Who gave those back to you!?" The room at large had no idea, Matt being fairly clueless as to what the boy does whilst he's on the computer. SG immediately looked guilty. I went into the living room to discover one of the counter-height chairs (that had been moved in the Great Rearranging) in front of the wall unit. Now, mind you - there's still a good 5 feet between the seat of that chair and where the flags were. Turns out that he can stretch himself to 58" and reaching the flags wasn't impossible from that chair.

And then yesterday happened. More later, because I have to go right now...

First run in with the police, age 4 years 4.5 months.

So, the Boy was given into the care of The Girl for large portions of yesterday - she was on her bike keeping an eye on him while he was on his trike riding up and down the sidewalk. We DID swap off and one of us would watch him and follow him for a while, but walking up and down the damn street over and over at fast-trike-speed was killing us (me and Jo). Toward the end of the day, apparently we shouldn't have made her take him for that last round. She (and her buddy) sent Nate back to the house on his trike with a dandelion for Daddy, and never made sure he got here. He was completely unaccounted for for close to 40 minutes. About 10 minutes after we realized he was gone (and we'd been running around the neighborhood searching), we'd (Matt, me, Josh) just gotten into cars and were pulling out when the police showed up. He was on the other side of the Street (it's a horseshoe) at a neighbor's house, and they'd called the police about him. Matt actually found him before the police got to that house, and stayed to talk with the officers about it.

She's grounded for a week, however one of the things we discussed was that if she's burned out on watching him - and we're not noticing - she needs to speak up and let us know. She was pretty upset when the gravity of the situation hit her, and we talked about the bad outcomes that SHE had thought of (I tend to NOT insert my own fears into her imagination - it's bad enough on it's own). We also identified the point at which she screwed up, and that was when she sent him back to the house and did not make sure he got to us (not just in the vicinity of the house). Included in the post mortem is the issue with us having allowed him to ride his trike up to either end of the street with supervision - he got a little too overconfident, overly independant and did it without supervision. AND THEN there was the fact that I'd thought about applying (and obviously DIDN"T) one of his Safety-Tat's with our phone numbers on it. Which the neghbors could simply have called if it were on him.