Pigpen

I actually, theoretically, have a few free minutes to write this morning while M is playing and everyone else is sleeping. Yet where to start? I need to be FAIR to all my kids. Hmm, perhaps it is time for an update on each kiddo. Since M was the first one up this morning (as he nearly always is), he gets to go first.

His current nickname is Pigpen. The child is ALWAYS dirty. This has a couple of causes. The first is that our floors are always dirty. We have two large, hairy dogs, and we live in a warm climate. They are always shedding. I could easily sweep every day. Probably more. At our old house we had vinyl floors in the bathrooms. Dog fur sticks to vinyl. Really sticks. There would be times in that I would finally get all the dog fur swept off the bathroom floors, leave the room to get the mop, and come back to discover a new layer of dog fur had settled on the floors. Given that I am clearly not the Martha Stewart of cleaning, there is always dog hair on the floor. Living on the coast, rather than having dirt for soil, we have black sand. Have you ever looked at a particle of black sand? They are really little. Really, really little. And they cling to everything. We try to be good and always take our shoes off at the door, but that isn't always possible when we are outside with the kids and need to run in to get something. And the dogs track it in. We clean their paws, but Pru always wants to go lay in the nice, cool sand in the shade, and so it clings to her fur. So despite cleaning the floors at least once a week, there is always a fine layer of fur and sand on the floor.

And Pigpen has is own special way of crawling. He worms around the house on his belly, using his arms in a swimming motion. He rarely pushes up on all forms. It is the perfect recipe for a messy baby.

Last Friday I CLEANED the floors. They looked good. Seriously! Then on Saturday morning, Pru decided to roll on the ground outside. When she came in, she left a trail of sand. Thankfully, I noticed it while all the kids were eating breakfast, so I quickly swept it up. But that didn't stop Pigpen. No, he managed to find the areas that I had somehow missed (and you would think that I would find most of the black sand on white tile in broad daylight). Before I could put him down for his morning nap, he had to have an emergency bath. The child looked like he had just swept a chimney with the front of his body. The front of him was covered in black from head to toe. The back, aside from his bottom, was miraculously clean.

But Pigpen does do more than crawl around getting dirty. He loves to sit and play, and he is very content to play independently as long as he knows where Jeff or I am. His favorite place to play, of course, is his big sis's room since it has nice soft carpeting to crawl on and is filled to the brim with choking hazards. We now close the door to her room whenever she is not in it since every time we put him down he heads straight to her room.

Baths are one of his favorite activities. All I have to do is start running the water in the bathtub, and he will come race-worming through the house in an effort to be the first to take a bath. He usually wins since his sis is not a fan of the all-sibling baths and is brother isn't at his best around bath time. One of his favorite games (and mine) is played most nights while undressing him. As I take off his shirt or onesie, he grabs it and starts playing peek-a-boo. He will pull it over his face when I ask where he is, and then he quickly pulls it up and grins when I see peek-a-boo. This came never gets old, at least for me. He is probably completely sick of it.

He is great in the tub too. He crawls around a little, but having wiped out twice, he is a smart little guy and crawls only to reach toys and knows to keep his head high above the water. He mostly sits and plays or watches his sis as she "cooks" or acts out crazy adventures in the tub.

M remains the most scheduled of our children. He takes two naps a day, at prescribed times, and always goes to bed between 7:30 - 8:00. Always. We have learned not to push him. The same is true for dinner when he eats no later than 5:45 each night. We do NOT serve him food at 5:46. It is too late! There will be a price to pay for such foolishness.

As much as I love his peek-a-boo, the most amusing fact about Pigpen has to be that he thinks he is a dog. While L wants to be just like R, we are almost certain M aspires to be a dog. He spends his time worming around looking for crumbs on the floor, and he can spot a fallen Cheerio or frozen pea from 10' away. (Not an easy trick if you have ever held your head six inches off the floor and tried to look for things.) M always comes when called, and if he had a tail, we know it would be wagging. He also loves to chew on rugs and shoes. We cannot leave shoes on the floor. Last weekend my brother and his wife were in town, and M was in heaven. With guests around, there were always shoes to chew. Hopefully, he will outgrow this, and if we catch him trying to chase his tail, we'll know he's gone too far.