High Maintenance Mom

Little Grab is now deep in the middle of the dumping phase. Anything than can possibly be dumped, must be dumped thus causing him to earn the new nickname, Baby Entropy (Entropy can be defined as a measure of the disorder of a system and the Second law of thermodynamics basically states that "there is always an increase in disorder")...

Cleaning up after Baby Entropy is difficult and requires a huge amount of energy on my part. One problem is that B has a large number of small toys for building, stacking, playing etc. I've been trying to go through the house and put things away but I haven't made that much progress. Deep down I know that my kids don't need several types of every developmental toy but B loves the 50 little dinosaurs and the 80 rubber transportation counting things and they really are different. As you can see, it's my problem too. So it probably isn't a huge surprise that Baby Entropy likes to dump out the buckets of small toys best.

I can understand the thrill of dumping - the toys go everywhere and often make neat noises. And, to make it even better, B and I react. Just dumping wouldn't really cause Baby Entropy to earn his new nickname, no, he also likes to move things throughout the house. He will carry a step stool around the house so he can climb up, grab things we never thought he would have, and then put them somewhere else. Often, he will also put the items in his mouth first. We find him walking around with random things in his mouth as he moves the cat food in the cat's water, our keys into the closet, or leaves trails of tissues/diaper wipes.

To top off our current situation, Baby Entropy is fast. He likes to grab things and run. He likes to sneak up and dump. He likes to throw things and best of all, he likes to play in water. We often find him on a step stool playing in the kitchen sink with water everywhere (I do try not to leave pots in the sink because he always finds them). Yesterday, I had both kids by myself and was returning from a trip to the park - more on that another time. B had to use the bathroom so I was trying to get him and the groceries into the house quickly. Baby Entropy managed to run back outside. As I was chasing a laughing Baby Entropy I could hear B yelling about something. When we got back inside I found B complaining about wet toilet paper. It turns out Baby Entropy had dumped the roll from my bathroom into the cat water or toilet, taken a big bite out of it, and then replaced it on its holder (see image at beginning of article). This is the phase when I just can't keep up.