Mother Is The Necessity Of Invention...

This last Friday I had to run out to the store on my lunch break to try and find some of those door knob safety covers.  The not-yet-two-year-old figured out how to open round door knobs a while back.  Apparently he now has the hand strength to follow through.


One evening last week, in the midst of a meltdown, the youngling finally realized his mom was in the hall bathroom with the door closed (and trying to keep quiet until the meltdown was over).  After banging his head on the door did nothing to remove the obstacle from his way, he decided to try what he'd seen us do umpteen times.  He reached up, grabbed the door knob, and started turning it.


It took him about a minute or so to get enough of a turn for the mechanism to clear the latch.  Fortunately for his mom, he'd distracted himself with the realization that he could open the door, so she didn't have to deal with toddler melt down.


But not wanting to provide any positive reinforcement for opening doors, we didn't say one thing about opening the door. We hoped he would forget.


No good.  Our son has the memory of an elephant.

Finley and the Cat Door

Thursday evening, a door once again separated son from mother; she was downstairs in the basement, feeding the cats.  Finley got tired of talking to her through the cat door, so he stood up, reached for the door knob, and had it open in about two seconds.


Oh, bother.


Sometimes, it's fun to see him learn, like when you're playing a matching game with him on the iPad and the concept of the game "clicks" and he knows exactly what he's supposed to do.


But there are other times when we see him figure something out and we immediately understand this new skill will result in us having to work even harder to keep him from getting into trouble.