TANNER- AKA: Trouble Maker, Buddy the Big Boy, Toot Toot Tanner

You know, I don't think motherhood was ever meant to be easy, but nobody said it couldn't be funny. I am FINALLY learning (3 1/2 years later) to relax a little and laugh little more at the things my kids do. I have known from the time Tanner's little personality started shining through at a few months old that he would be a handful. I'm learning boys are extremely different than girls, and that Tanner is just a curious boy who loves to find trouble.
A few weeks ago I was trying so hard to be productive and get some spring cleaning done, but everytime I turned around Tanner was into something that just made a bigger mess for me to clean up. Instead of getting frustrated (it doesn't do any good to get mad at a 1 year old) I decided to just take a picture so at least Brad would believe me when he came home from work and I told him all the things Tanner did that day.

So I thought I'd let you in on a few of those laughs...

(these pictures obviously weren't taken all in one day, but over the coarse of the last 2 months. I did notice he seems to be wearing his orange shirt a lot in the pictures though- I wonder if orange makes him naughty!)

Yes- that is the toilet he is playing in. This kid LOVES the bathroom and has some kind of radar built into him that sounds an alarm when Ashlyn happens to leave the door open. Notice the pile of toilet paper on the floor. He crawls in there as fast as he can, unrolls the entire roll of toilet paper. He will then start pulling the toilet paper apart and put it in the toilet to swish it around with his hands... yummy! (He can do all this in a matter of seconds)

The kitchen pantry is another one of those doors that we TRY to keep closed because he is in it the second he discovers it is open. He somehow figured out how to get the lid off the 5 gallon bucket of flour and made a nice mess (you can't see his grubby little hands and arms that are covered in white powder, but he did sneak a taste!)

Another time the pantry was left open... I guess he was hungry. (He looks posed in the picture, but he wasn't. He was really just sitting there helping himself to a box of cookies!)

The worst is when he actually dumps the cereal boxes out- this time the boxes stayed in tact, but he has been known to dump almost an entire box of cheerios all over the floor (some messes just have to be cleaned immediately- no time to grab the camera!)

Tanner loves to unload things. I don't know if he likes the messes they make or the crashing sound things make when they hit the floor, but he can destroy Ashlyn's room in 2 seconds flat!

He has an almost daily routine of unloading all the dvd's from the drawer.
He also unloads the kitchen drawer a few times a day. I guess sometimes it works better to unload it if you're sitting in it- that way you can throw the rags a little further!
He has discovered the ONE kitchen cabinet that doesn't lock and he makes sure to show me every day that it doesn't lock. I have found him screaming more than once when he has tried to climb in that cupboard and gotten stuck... I think he's finally learned he won't fit! Tanner loves my purse and goes through it any chance he gets. He will usually hunt down my cell phone to play with first, but lately he has had this thing with gum. He wants to chew it. If you ever get a piece of gum from me don't be surprised if it has little teeth marks in it. He will go through and bite each piece. When he sees me coming he starts chewing faster and then he'll throw the gum to me (he was surprised today when I took his picture).

I will never understand why lunch would taste better on the floor then on your tray, but Tanner seems to think it does. His favorite game is dropping his food and saying ought-oh, and then after I get him down he goes back over to eat the food he dropped. This frustrates me because I will give him clean food and offer him something else and he'll refuse to eat it in his highchair, but then eat off the floor minutes later. He also loves to "beg" food off any of us. He'll pull himself up to wherever we're sitting and open his mouth like a little bird until we drop food into it. (He even begs food off Ashlyn!)

Unloading all the wipes and then eating them... normal???

Apparently the garbage bags don't need to be in the box anymore. Ummm ya- that is the kitchen garbage all over the floor (the same floor he eats off)!"Oh here mom, you want some!"

Trouble- you bet. Adorable- absolutely! I love this kid SO much!