Of Trouble Capitalized

Today was a day of firsts for our little guy.  Unfortunately, not the kind of firsts we look forward to as parents.

While sitting at the computer desk this morning, I heard my son making noise in the kitchen.  A part of me wanted to not even look because sometimes it's true, ignorance is bliss.  But, look I did and noticed he had opened his first cabinet and was now banging together two plastic cups.  This was my thought process:

"He's in the Tupperware cabinet [which, in reality, holds all of one piece of Tupperware hijacked from my mom when she stored our leftover wedding cake in it nearly five years ago now, but when your parents sold this particular line of plastic-ware for a number of your wonder years, any cupboard housing food storage containers of any sort somehow comes to be known as the Tupperware cabinet - and, no, this aside was not a part of my original thought process].  Should I do something about it?  On the one hand, he can't really hurt my Glad-ware [the poor man's Tupperware].  And if I pretend I didn't see it, does that count as inconsistent parenting? . . . On the other hand, if he's opening cabinets, it's only a matter of time before he finds the dishwasher detergent - this is probably one of those things referred to as a teachable moment - I should probably get off my rear and teach.  Darn that responsible parenting concept."

And so little man got a hand swat and a, "No!"  And he went about his business elsewhere.

Somehow, his business, within a matter of three minutes (or less), involved investigating a plug-in air freshener and the open hallway closet (on the other side of our home from our kitchen, that boy was bookin' it).  Things he, until that precise moment, had never even acknowledged existed and, for some reason, now was drawn to like a fat man to candy.

I can tell he's spent the last ten months lulling me into a sense of security and now his raging trouble-maker hormones are beginning to unleash a world of havoc.  Better put on my seatbelt.

That boy is trouble.  Strike that.  Make it Trouble.