They saying goes that boys wreck your house and girls wreck your head. Being a first-time mum to an 18 month old boy, I can’t say whether the latter is true, but all I can tell you is that my little dude is a walking trail of destruction.
Literally nothing is safe since he started walking and growing… and by Jesus the growing! I look at him some days and I swear his legs have actually grown taller in a night. He can reach so much of everything now. The fridge is opened on a regular basis and things are fecked on the ground with wild abandon. We’ve had bowls, ornaments, lamps and mugs smashed to smithereens. My lipstick collection has been used as a magic marker and put all over himself and the floor. The carpet is in actual shite, from all manner of food, drool, muck and human excrement being mushed into it. I hoover and two seconds later there is flour, or sand or baby powder thrown on the floor.
Anything that’s left on the counter is fair game in his mind… everything from my phone, to washing-up liquid, bread, eggs, knives, forks, spoons, chopping boards. He swipes pens and pencils and writes on the counters and the wall, kitchen roll ends up in the dog’s water. You name it, he’s swiped it at this stage. And just when I think I’ve pushed it back far enough to be out of his reach he pushes a chair over there so he can climb up!
Why did no one warn me about the furious climbing? The couch, chairs, counter tops, the back of the bath, onto the table… everything is a possible Everest for him.
I turned my back for literally a few seconds the other day and when I came around the corner, he’d managed to get behind the fire guard and was proudly standing inside it, as if that’s where he supposed to be. (Main pic)
Speaking of the fire, my lanterns in front it are now null and void, the TV and DVD box have had to be put up higher and higher as he grows taller almost by the day… Those low shelves I thought looked superb and then filled them with breakables and picture frames have now had to be stripped bare for fear of little hands grabbing the lot and having a Greek style plate smash up… at this rate everything is going to be on a shelf so high, I’ll even need a ladder to get to.
I thought having a puppy with a penchant for chewing things up was bad… one day she chewed the strap off my Alexander McQueen handbag, my laptop cable and the arm of my glasses! But she’s in the ha’penny place compared to my toddler’s trail of destruction.
Ultimately, I was a naïve gobshite before I had kids… there’s so much about pre-child me that I look back on an laugh at… complaining about lack of sleep, thinking I was stressed when I really wasn’t and bemoaning at ‘having to go out’… but what was really stupid on my part was thinking I could have nice things in a relatively small house when my boy was up on his feet!