Heard around the house today...

"Daddy, did you turn the sauce into bacon?"

Heard around the house...

"Why are you beating your brother with your underwear?"

New series: Heard around the kitchen...

Or, 'Things you don't want to hear from the people preparing your food' : "How do you spell cheese??"

The Monkeyboy has passed his title on...crap.

My little brother has been the reigning king of climbing in the family for years...this kid, if I remember, was climbing out of his crib at somewhere around six months old. He even managed to chew his way through one of those crib tent things, the ones that only has the zipper on the outside and are supposedly impossible to escape from. This morning, although he doesn't know it yet, he has been outdone by his 2-year old nephew, my son, henceforth (and around the house) known as Stinkerbutt.

We realized a couple days ago that Stinkerbutt had grown enough to climb out of his playpen unassisted. We had been using the playpen in place of a regular crib because it takes up so much less space, but in anticipation of his growth I picked up an old crib for free off Craigslist. Two nights ago, with much swearing and a trip to the hardware store, the Stinkerbutt's father put the old wood monstrosity together, and with some safety pins and a bit of ingenuity, rigged an inexpensive mattress for it. It worked great, it's got the vertical bars so he can't get enough height to swing his leg over the side, especially since he can barely see over the side. I went to bed in peace, for two nights, with no worries that I would once again wake up to find him taking a bath in the toilet, or calling Indonesia on the house phone.

I was wrong. This morning, (I repeat) barely two days after this humongous hunk of firewood takes up residence over about half the living room floor, I wake up to hear Stinkerbutt slamming the toilet lid, one of his favorite things to do when he escapes supervision. Wondering if perhaps I was indeed half monkey as I had always been told, and had passed those genes on the my son, I put him back in the crib because I wanted to see how he had managed it. As I was doing this, my arm bumped the side of the crib, which moved. It's not supposed to move. I looked in Stinkerbutt's hand, and realized the little brat had managed to unscrew one of the frickin' bolts. In two hours!! It couldn't have been more than that. And as I sit here typing this, he's gone to work on another bolt, since I zip-tied the last one (being unable to fund the nut that went wit the bolt, hpe he didn't swallow it.). I think maybe Stinkerbutt's father might be right: we oughta just build a floor-to-ceiling monkey cage.

Edited to add: It seems worth saying that this brilliant 2-year-old who can unscrew his crib, and almost open the front door, and has an ever growing vocabulary of intelligible words, still runs facefirst into doors and laughs.

Heard around the house today...

"I didn't say it was relevant, I just said it reminded me of a hooker I met in downtown Portland!"


Bonus round: "If fish could fly, I'd be an acorn."

Heard around the house today...

"That's sorta profound." "Sorta profound? Is that like being kinda pregnant??"