The Naughtiest Naughty EVER

Apparently, the Naughty Gene runs deep in this family. 

This entry is inspired by Brylan's cousin, Elliot (age 1 1/2), son of Alvin and Doretta:

10/13/12, Alvin: Doretta left yesterday at noon for a ladies retreat, leaving me with all the children. Elliot is just the naughtiest little naughty boy you have EVER in your life seen. I am at my wit's end dealing with him. He has such a warm sweet disposition. He smiles so nicely and sincerely at me, as he tries to stir the trash can with a clean spatula from the drawer. Literally, as I am typing this, he decided to climb up over the end of the sofa, kicking over the magazine stand in the process.

And now he is messing with the blinds, watching me, so that as soon as I look at him, he stops.
I had to pause and go change his poo just now. As I was disposing of his full diaper, he got a Cheez-it from Selena, laid it on the carpet, got a golf club, and is trying to shatter it. And while I was typing that last line, he got one of the red chairs, took it to coffee stand where all kinds of forbidden items are, and is testing me on each of them. He literally does naughty things faster than I can type about them!!!

The older two are happily watching a movie about two bananas in pajamas. But he is scooting his red chair over..... pausing for a drink from HIS sippy cup (that's a switch--usually he drinks from one of the others', which he knows he is not supposed to do).... and just going around to the end of the coffee stand to see if Mommy's cell phone is there for him to nab (it's not). So off the chair..... scooting it over behind the high chair where I can't see.... I hear the creak of a cupboard door....And he is now starting to root among the dry goods there. He got bored with that, so he got off the chair, opened the lower cupboard and is examining something inside it.

Earlier today, I was giving Evan a bath, and, of course, Elliot just had to be in the bathroom getting into stuff. In the past, he has opened the toilet and started playing in the water. So I gave him Evan's dirty undies and told him "hamper!". He trucked off out of the kids' bathroom, and I kept working. After Evan was bathed and dressed, I went out to the family room to see what is happening. Selena is on the laptop....no Elliot. And she doesn't know where he is (oblivious to all, of course). I went into our room and noticed our bathroom door was shut. I walked around the bed.... and there was a little fist visible under the door--a little fist that was not moving.

I walked to the door, and was able to open it just enough to see the top of his head. He was laying motionless right in front of the door, blocking me from opening it. My heart was in my throat.... in a flash, I saw various scenarios... he crawled up onto the sink and fell and hit his head. He got into the drugs under the sink. Or, he got some drugs, crawled up onto the sink, took the drugs, fell off the sink, and is bleeding, unconscious, and OD'ing on Oxycodone simultaneously. You get the picture.

I gently tapped his head a few more times with the door, and said his name. He started to move.... and rolled over and started getting up. I opened the door all the way and snatched him up. No bleeding, no substances coming out of his mouth.... just an ear syringe and an unopened box of gas pills on the floor.

I have to admit, I nearly started crying. You read about this stuff happening to other people, and I nearly had my own emergency 911 situation.

Then, I started to get angry at his mother. How DARE she run off and leave such an incompetent as me in charge of innocent helpless babes?? If she had been here, one of us would surely have stopped him from sallying into my imagined home disaster and near death experience!

Then I calmed down. There was no point in getting angry at her about anything..... it was just my reaction to the imagined near death of my son, that's all.

And while I was typing the above story from this afternoon, he brought me a plastic part that come from something in one of the cabinets. I took it from him and laid it up on the sill by the easy chair. He was rather attached to that little plastic bit, and has made several attempts to abscond with it, leading me to scold him and issue several firm NO's (firm NO's look a lot like shouting). He has been up on the sofa messing with the blinds again, and then has decided that since I keep scolding him and preventing him from fiddling with stuff, he will just circle my easy chair. The one in the corner that he has to SQUEEEEEEZE through to get by, pushing the air filter out of place at the same time.

I think when his Mommy gets here I might just go lock myself in the office and refuse to come out until humans under 5 feet in height have been put to bed. And maybe next week we will ship him off to reform school.

PS: Earlier, Selena gave me my ear buds that I didn't even notice were missing. She says that Elliot was messing with them, and she knew he shouldn't have them, so she took them away. The only problem is, he pulled off the little soft plastic things that let them fit snug into your ears. Who knows what he did with them..... I may find them in the AC duct one day.

10/13/12, Sharon: I can't even imagine how naughty he and Brylan would be together, because if he's the naughtiest naughty, then Bry is #2.  And he continually outsmarts us.  The only thing saving us right now is that he hasn't figured out how to unlock a doorknob lock.  Deadbolts are a piece of cake although they may cause him to pause.  And he can almost outrun us—sometimes can.  If only you could REASON with the boy…

10/13/12, Alvin: The little plastic thing that he got out of the cupboard? After I sent my email, I got up and went to see what he got it off of. It is a little grommet that fits into a vent hole in the lid of our fancy schmancy crockpot. I inserted it back in, closed the cupboard door, and took his red chair and put it away. As I was putting away his red chair, he circled around the kitchen island, silently opened the cupboard door, and had already peeled the grommet back out of the crockpot lid by the time I pushed in his red chair and turned around and caught him in the act.

I'll put my naughty up against anyone else's.

10/13/12, Jolene: Oh my goodness. I was laughing so hard I was almost crying. At work.  Seriously, I feel. your. pain. I would actually *love* to see Brylan and Elliot play together. Two naughtys make a right, RIGHT? I have to say though, it is nice to hear that someone else has a mischievous little boy!! Whenever I come in contact with other little boys, I marvel at how sweet and nice they are!

Today, when I was getting ready to leave for work, I heard a cracking and a whacking going on out in the living room. I went to investigate, and Brylan was using his stick horse as a bat and the lamp as his target. He had whacked it right off the stand. The other day, I had sat down for literally 5 or 6 minutes at Sharon's computer. I suddenly realized I needed to go check on him. What did I find? Smoke filling the kitchen and living room. He has developed a fondness for corndogs, and had decided that he no longer needed to get my attention when he is hungry. Why NO, he put the blasted corndog in the microwave himself! When I yanked open the microwave door, there was 82 minutes still left on the microwave and there was nothing but a blackened, charred lump on a stick that had melted a part of the plastic tray. Was I surprised, though? Nope. It's something every single day. I just try to roll with the punches.

Oh. This is another good story! Kris and Sharon had gone and bought two Very Nice recliners off Craigslist. One went upstairs and one came downstairs for Sharon to use in her recovery. What did Brylan do probably the second day we had that recliner? He scribbled very large bright circles with his crayons all over that poor chair. I guess he had to mark his territory.

10/13/12, Kris: Quite honestly, I am sure that Elliot's naughty pales in comparison to Brylan's.
Sharon cleaned out her office recently and freed it from all its candy.  I poured it all together and put it into a wide-mouthed mason jar and put it on the second shelf of the cupboard beside the stove.  I don't know how he discovered it, but he did.  He does not ask permission to have some candy.  He just pushes our tall chairs over to the cupboard and climbs aboard and helps himself.  

I delivered him from his misdeeds this afternoon when caught in the act--although I allowed him to have the sucker he had clenched firmly in his hand.  I then moved the jar from the second shelf up to the very top shelf.  That'll fix him, I thought.  About an hour or so later, I heard something suspicious, and so I went to investigate.  I came upon the boy just as he was standing there on the cupboard itself, stretching up to reach the jar--on the topmost shelf!

10/13/12, Sharon: Except the time that I found him it wasn't even one of our tall chairs that he used.  He used his tiny child-sized chair that is may be 12" tall at the most and boosted himself up with his strong little arms.  He was in the midst of a box of bite-sized tootsie roll suckers (without a stick).  His mouth was brimming full, and he was reaching for more.  Of course, he shrieked as I confiscated what was left and the chocolate and grape and tootsie roll goo spilled down his shirt.   He madly stuffed it back inside, all the while shrieking.

You just wouldn't believe his strength.

10/13/12, Alvin: The only reason Elliot would NOT surpass Brylan is because he is a fair amount younger and smaller. My naughty isn't even able to run properly yet.

I think the only way to get the naughty boys to stop is to ENGAGE them. I took the kids to Home Depot today after lunch, bought them a slide, brought it home, and screwed it to our back steps, and they played the rest of the afternoon. He was just as good as gold through the trip to town, and happily played outside. He goes flying down that slide, blutzes down on the ground, looks up at me, and grins.

I finally bring them inside to start the aforementioned baths, and the naughtiness starts.

PS: The other evening we had company for supper. Elliot was running around with a set of junk/play keys on a key ring. He comes around the corner into the dining room, heads for the nearest outlet, and starts trying to electrocute himself as quickly as possible. I was engaged in conversation with our company, and suddenly I am shouting NO NO NO and lunging out of my chair to get him. Not a very decorous evening.

10/13/12, Kris: Speaking of keys…  Brylan insists that the only thing that will get his little Fisher Price car to start is a set of Real Keys.  We had to come up with some real keys for him, or our keys would be up to bat.    And there they sit, dangling from his FP ignition.

10/13/12, Alvin: Elliot also loves to terrorize his older siblings when they have the laptop. He will come up and yank the power cord out. They holler at him, plug it back in, and as soon as their attention is back on the screen he comes up and does it again. He quickly backs out of range of their flailing feet and just grins at their shrieks. It usually takes parental involvement to get him to leave them alone.

10/14/12, Esther (aka Mamaw): After reading all your emails, I am chortling with glee!  Elliot doesn't hold a candle to Brylan.  I couldn't even begin to tell you about all his naughties.  The scariest things were that twice he pedaled his bike as fast as he could towards the road.  I didn't know this Grandma could run until this happened.