My brain cells have largely reclassified themselves as dandruff. I had grabbed a pair of socks and went hunting for my fuzzy Crocs. I found one Croc shoe, so I slipped on a sock and stepped into my shoe. While wandering with my remaining sock in hand, I entered our large master bathroom and found a pile of the boys’ clothes that  forgot to find the laundry basket. I scooped up the laundry and sorted it into the laundry basket. Pausing to remember my original mission, I realized I was empty-handed. I went sock-hunting through the clothes and quickly found the clean sock that I had been holding, but continued digging for another minute or two looking for my other sock. It was probably my lopsided stance that eventually reminded me I was wearing it.

I rolled my eyes at myself and found my left shoe with a toy phone in a bag beside my dresser. There’s a busy 13-month-old boy scrambling my belongings around the house. Just a little bit ago, Elijah had loaded up one of Isaac’s rain boots with a bunch of small toys and was toting it around the house. Even these posts are taking longer to type, because he picks the buttons off of my laptop keyboard, and they no longer want to work as effectively (Let’s all agree to blame my typos on the funky keyboard). Well, Elijah’s Mr. Big stuff now; he can climb both up and down the stairs. Every time we’ve gone to the playground, he has practiced and practiced his decent on the steps. I’ve noticed for a few days that he hasn’t stood at the top calling down for me. I couldn’t be certain if he wasn’t going up the stairs all the way, or if he’d mustered the bravery to climb down. But, yesterday I saw the proof.

This afternoon, I was reading the boys a book called “Dragon Opposites.” It shows pictures of dragons in opposite scenarios. One is hot, one is cold, and so forth. I asked the boys some questions about the story, and their answers reflected their temperaments quite well. I would ask, “What is the opposite of hot?” Isaac would answer with the word, “cold.” Ian’s response was to point at the picture of the opposite and say, “This one.” Ian is the artistic/mechanical one. Isaac has a way with words.

Ian is on a bit of an independence kick. Last night he waved a section of pool noodle at us, proudly claiming that he had cut it all by himself. Brian and I, bug-eyed, jumped up and asked, “How?! With what?” He led us into the kitchen, where he’d performed his operation with my 10-inch Wusthof. We expressed our relief that he hadn’t been hurt, and that we weren’t ready for him to use sharp objects yet. Minutes after stashing the knife and returning to our projects in the living room, he marches back in, boasting that he’d just made a gun. I looked up to see him holding a toddler knife, impaled through the pool noodle fragment. We had to work on rephrasing our wishes for his play time.