Heaven help me, I think I'm going to need it!
My second son is very different than the first, not just in looks and in personality but in his capacity for trouble.
He's been walking for about a month, still a little tipsy, kinda has a penguin waddle thing going still. He falls a lot and since a few weeks ago when he fell and cut his eyebrow open on an end table (table is now gone, but the scar remains, had to take him into the doctor and they "glued" it back together) he cries and fits nearly every time he falls now. (Which is like, four or five times an hour.)
The "child proof" latches that you put on cupboards no longer work. He's discovered that he can squeeze his arm through the gap, grab things and sometimes pull them back through. It still slowed him down for a while, but now he's gotten much faster at it to where I'm just going to have to totally empty out everything, having no idea where to put it all yet as space is rather limited in our apartment.
He seems to think that opening the oven, trying to reach the top of the stove and playing with the dishwasher are facinating activities.
He thinks it's funny to throw things at people's heads.
He hates going to sleep, he won't let me hold him until he falls asleep anymore, he fights it and wants to keep playing and the only way we've managed recently is to lay him down with his blanket and bear in his crib and let him play/fuss for a while until he get's so tired and bord that he falls asleep. If he wakes up in the night (which happens frequently) he likes to holler until he wakes up his brother (so he can have some company/entertainment) and there are many nights where, exhausted, we've brought our older son in with us, making a bed for him on the floor and gone back to sleep... just left baby to laugh, holler, then finally cry and fuss himself back to sleep. (Now we can't even do that... don't know what we are going to do yet.)
He's into everything... just when you think something is okay and/or out of reach he finds a way to prove you wrong. He loves to try to find ways to climb onto everything... bookcases (which have now been removed except for one short, heavy, anchored to the wall one) chairs... tables... my computer desk.
I had a "play pen" for him downstairs in the family room which was made by placing the two couches with their arms together at an angle to form two sides and the corner with the two walls forming the other two sides. It was a totally safe place where he could be and I wouldn't have to worry what he was doing if I had to take a shower, help my other son with something, answer the door, cook dinner, etc. This worked until this past weekend when I came in after putting dinner in the oven to find him sitting on the couch with a look of triumph on his little face. I placed him back in and watched as he climbed right back out. He climbs in and out at will now.
Last night, I put him to bed, went to get a blanket, came back in to find him nearly out of his crib. A modern, standard sized crib with its standard sized mattress down as low as it will go in the crib. His leg was resting over the top rail, his arms on the rail as well, doing a fair job at heaving himself up and over, another moment and he would have had it. The problem is that the top of the crib is a lot higher than the couch, has less places to grab/rest for support that he can reach and use during an actual climb and has a sharp edged bar along the bottom that holds the side of the crib up and allows the side to go up and down. I'm afraid he's going to fall wrong and get gashed open again or land wrong and seriously break something (like his neck)! Last night was a long night.
What do you do when your baby's ability to climb/get into things so far outstrips his understanding and in some cases, ability to be careful and/or just not do something? If he was a little taller so he could reach to climb out more safely, if he was old enough to even start to get the concept of sleeping in a big kid bed, if I wasn't afraid that my sleepwalking six year old would leave the doors open to the bedroom, the bathroom and then leave the toilet seat wide open for "I don't feel like sleeping in the middle of the night" baby to climb out, toddle in and drown in or that he'd climb in the tub and start in on the water there! (Toilet latches and turning the water heater down only go so far... and unfortunately, my hubby and I are all too often deep sleepers and might not hear him in time). Then of course, there are the stairs (which he doesn't do well on yet) and the whole rest of the house for him to get into while we're asleep. I just know he's going to try if we don't figure out a way to stop him.
AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHH! I love the little fellow dearly and want to keep him safe, but he's fast outstripping my ability to know how to keep him safe.... all so worried and frustrated at the same time. This is stuff that I didn't think kids got really into until they were a bit older, yet he's not even on the close side to two yet. If he's acting like this now....
(Or maybe he'll just get it over with sooner? We'll hope???)Has anyone else around here had a child like this? What did you do?
Yeah, "this to shall pass"... yeah, yeah.......
Sara (*who is on the verge of pulling her hair out... if her baby doesn't pull it all out first*)
