I could go anywhere.

I've just found that I could buy an unlimited pass to fly wherever I wanted on Sun Country airlines. How sweet is that? For $500 I could go anywhere Sun Country could take me for 37 days.  Think how cool it would be to take Oliver's pictures in all the random places we could go... Neat neat neat. That would be an awesome adventure.

Not much has been going on around here. Oliver's destructive genius has expanded exponentially since he figured out how to open our baby gate. For a few days I thought I was going crazy. I'd look over, see Oliver in the kitchen and think... Dang. I was sure I closed the gate. But no no. Oliver can open the gate himself and now wanders where he pleases. I spied on him through the bookcase yesterday and watched how he does it. He stands on his tip toes, reaches up for the lever, lifts it and slams his body against it to swing it open. Cheeky little thing that boy is. When we first put the gate up it crossed my mind that maybe we shouldn't open it in his sight. Then I thought, nahhhh! They're baby gates. Meant for keeping out babies! Surely he won't be able to open it for some time. I was wrong.

Good thing we have no stairs or Oliver would have been in the ER 5 times over by now. It's one of those "if I had a nickel..." situations. He naturally gravitates towards the off-limits no matter where we are. I've mentioned his propensity for electrical cords and knives before, but do you know what else he loves?

Eating rocks. Trying to bite the outlet covers out of our outlets. Taking leaping dives off of the couch. Pulling the bar stools down on top of his head. Falling headfirst into the toy box. Sticking his fingers in doorjambs. Finger painting his crib sheets with his own feces. Crawling into the tiniest possible spaces, getting stuck.

The list goes on. The kid is a crawling disaster waiting to happen. It makes it difficult to watch him in any non baby proofed areas. It's not that he means to be bad, but he just... gets into stuff. It's this magnetic attraction to danger that he has. If I'm there to catch him in time and tell him no, he does a decent job of letting things go. But let's be honest. I can't be watching him directly for every moment of every day, and he gets into things. I can turn around to grab a paper towel and look back and, hey! wouldn't you know it! He's got a pair of scissors in his mouth and he's smiling like the cat with the canary.

It is at once terrifying and adorable. What do you do with a baby like that?

Is that a pair of jumper cables I see over there?

Get out of my way! Those are mine!