Climbing the walls, literally

Yesterday, Sawyer turned 18 months old. I'll let you process that for a second.

I know, right?! I think back to when Charlotte was this age and I was almost out of my first trimester with him. I was pregnant when my baby was only 16 months old. And now I look at Sawyer, a hellion on wheels, and am glad I had Charlotte first. As much as I wanted my children close in age, there's no way on the motherloving planet I would have been able handle him, a pregnancy, and another baby.

Boys and girls are more different than I ever imagined. I'm a tough woman. I played sports, I love football and video games. I guess a lot of those qualities are considered masculine. And even though I also love my nails and pedicures and pretty shoes, I'd rather eat wings and drink beer at a sports bar than foie gras at a French bistro (although I ain't gonna lie, I love me some fancy food.)

And I'm raising my daughter that way. She wears her princess t-shirt underneath her karate gi. She plays with her dollhouse and has the daddy in the kitchen and the mommy in the office. She takes her Barbies for rides on her "motorcycle." Even though she is by far my more dramatic child (no idea where she could have possibly got that from), she's an easy kid. Other than an infancy of colic and reflux, she was an easy baby and toddler.

I could put her down with some blocks and she'd pay while I cooked dinner. I could put her at the table with crayons and paper and unload the dishwasher. I could put on Nemo and take a shower.

But Sawyer?

I put him down with blocks and he builds an tower and climbs on it, trying to reach the remote he knows he can't have. I put him at the table with crayons and he eats them or then draws all over my wall. I put him on the couch with Curious George on so I can take a shower and find out the hard way that he knows how to unlock the backdoor as I wrestle him back in from the deck, very naked and very cold.

We hate tattling so we're teaching Charlotte that unless Sawyer is doing something harmful to him or her or one of the animals, that they need to learn to work it out. Unless what he's doing is dangerous or she needs my help resolving a situation, I don't wanna hear about it.

But maybe I wasn't clear enough because escaping the house while Momma's in the shower is something worth tattling on.

In the past week I've found him: at the top of the stairs despite the baby gate, playing with his "Doda" (Yoda figurine) in the potty; eating dog food; with a live phone wire in his mouth; using the dog as a step stool to get on the couch then base-jumping onto a pile of pillows; trying to climb out of his crib; using the shower curtain to try and climb onto the window sill; eating food from the garbage; inside -- yes actually inside -- the dishwasher; and my personal favorite: inside the dog crate.

I love my children for their differences and for their similarities.

I love Sawyer because of who HE is, not because of the sister he isn't. But I will tell you this: if we had him first, I seriously doubt the second baby would have followed so soon.

I remember people telling me boys were different and I'd look at my daughter who was trying to scale the kitchen countertops and think that they didn't know MY daugther. That she was crazy.

And then I had Sawyer. And I ate my words. They taste like insanity.

Beautiful insanity.

(This is what happens when you run around like a crazy person all morning. You just drop when you stop.)