Boys Will Be Boys

Colin is really developing a personality now that he is a big 18-month old.  I would say the prevalent personality trait that is coming out is boy.  He loves balls, trucks, airplanes, tractors and pretty much anything that has wheels.

People warned me that boys are different than girls and I was fully prepared for a bit of a culture shock once I had one.  I felt a little more prepared because Maddie was pretty active and was always getting into things, pulling things out of drawers, pulling pots and pans out of cabinets, unloading the pantry, climbing, standing in the dog's water bowl, etc.  But there are some subtle, and not so subtle differences with Colin.

It all started when I changed his first diaper.  The only word I can think of to describe it was chaos.  My friends with boys primary advice was keep lots of Vaseline on hand for the circumcision wound. Vaseline, check.  Unfortunately, the minute, no, the second I opened his diaper he would whizz all over himself and me.  I would unsuccessfully end up dodging pee before I could even get the Vaseline on!  The main problem is if you try to cover his little wee-wee without properly lubing it first, it will cause his circumcision wound a great deal of pain.  Think about the logistics of this and you can only imagine the comedy that changing each diaper brought.  When the whizz wasn't flying, his butt was usually providing some explosions of their own. As with most breastfed babies, the watery mustard seed poops didn't really subside until he was about 4 months old and started eating some solids.

I finally realized that if I waited to change him until after I nursed him, I would usually avoid major cleanups.  I learned the hard way that he usually relieved himself during feedings.  About 5 minutes into his feeding I could feel a sudden warm rush on my stomach.  Somehow he had leaked through his diaper and all over me.  Rather than interrupt the feeding, I would sit in the wetness because God forbid I tease him with 5 minutes of Mother's Milk only to pull him away and put him through the agony of being stripped naked and changed.  I received some good advice and bumped him up to the next diaper size and we solved the whole leaking issue and once his wound healed, the juggling act got a little easier. 

As he got older, he did most of the usual baby things.  Eat, sleep, poop, eat, eat, sleep, poop, eat, sleep, eat, eat, poop...but mostly eat.  And that was one of the first differences between he and Maddie.  She nursed well and did pretty well with baby food, but as soon as I introduced texture, she gagged and threw up.  To this day, she has a limited diet and isn't much for trying new things.  Colin, on the other hand, will eat pretty much anything and everything you put in front of him.  In fact, he will also seek out things to eat, like dog food for example.

It is pretty much a given if we leave the laundry room door open, Colin will make his way in there for a little snack.  Makes it hard for the dogs to eat when a) the door is almost always closed and b) they have to compete for food with Colin.  Luckily Colin makes up for what he takes from them by tossing his extra food off his tray when he's done or outright feeding them his food.  When he's not eating dog food, he's using the dog bowl as a water table driving his trucks into the bowl or dropping Maddie's stuffed animals into it.

Colin also likes to hide in the pantry, because that is where all the good stuff is.  He has learned to pull boxes and bags off the shelves and help himself.  One day I found him hiding in there chowing down on a bag of Cheetos like a Bulimic teenage girl.  He looked up at me with his cheesy face and licked his fingers.  Now he has also discovered that is where we keep an even guiltier pleasure...cat food.  I do a great deal of  "sweeping" animal food out of Colin's mouth.  Turns out that the smorgasbord doesn't stop there.  Colin also likes leaves, mulch and as I mentioned in my previous post, Polly Pockets clothes. 

Today was a particularly gold banner day for Colin.  A trip to the park involved licking the slide, the edge of the equipment, and the piece de resistance, going face first into the sand and taking a nice bite like he was in a pie-eating contest.  Only difference is the sand at the park isn't a blueberry pie, it’s the neighborhood litter box.  He immediately started sputtering and I had to try and get as much of it out of his mouth as possible.  Once I had cleared most of it out, I could just hear the grains of sand crunching in as he bit down.  There's nothing like exfoliating the inside of your mouth and everything else throughout the digestive tract.  Shortly after that, I was distracted by a Maddie meltdown when a little girl pushed her.  After dealing with the situation, I realized Colin had run off and I caught him trying to steal a juice box out of someone’s stroller.  Clearly, he had "dry mouth."  Yeah, dry like the Mojave! At least sand has minerals, right?  When we arrived home, he headed toward the recycling bin where he grabbed a Subway cup and tried to quench his thirst.  We finally made our way inside and he chugged some milk. 

You would think he would have learned his lesson about putting foreign objects in his mouth, but later in the evening, he had managed to get his hands on one the gourds we had gotten from the pumpkin farm and was gnawing on the end of that.  Gross. I worried with all the "snacking" he had done he wouldn't eat dinner.  Nope.  Fish, corn, pears, a cookie... he ate it all. 

An hour later I found him opening the garbage can and grabbing scraps of food out.  What is wrong with this child?  Another hour goes by and he comes to visit Maddie and I in the bathroom as I am wiping her and helping her wash her hands.  I look over and he is licking the toilet seat cover.  Seriously?

Did I mentioned that toilet seat cover has a handy, dandy little locking device because I caught him using that as a water table a few months back?  I guess that makes the dog's water bowl look sterile in comparison.

Other new addition to our childproofing is Plexiglas shield that is about 3 feet high and 5 feet wide to cover our entire entertainment center.  He was really good and turning our TV on and off, pulling the DVD off the shelf and pulling any cable or electronic device associated with our TV, cable or computer.  Maybe he has a future in electrical engineering?  Let's hope so.  Next on the list to childproof is our DVD/CD cabinet that he loves to unload and spread throughout the house.

Needless to say, he climbs, he gets into everything and above all else, he loves to throw things!  He takes 2 liters of pop and hurls them across the kitchen.  Ten-pound weights...no problem.  I see a shot put scholarship in his future.  I have even caught him throwing an art easel across the room, and then turned it on its side to use as a slide.  I guess now that the weather is getting colder and since we can't go to the park as much, he's going to bring the park to us.

Today ended with him using the edge of the crib for leverage and balancing his stomach on it until his legs were out behind him...picture a gymnast on the high bar.  I am dreading the day he figures out how to get out of his crib. I am guessing that if that is his method for flipping himself out, it is fairly likely a trip to the E.R. will follow.

And when all is said and done, he is my boy. He loves to give hugs and kisses. He is silly and I can already tell he is going to have a great sense of humor.  He is also a total flirt and since he came out of me, he looked at me with those big brown eyes framed by those dark eyebrows, like I was the most beautiful girl in the world.  Now, when we are out, he finds the most beautiful girl in the room to fixate on.  She often times tends to be a blond with big boobs.  Like I said, he's all boy.