Mickey Mouse

 Apparently, Teddy's ambition in life is to be Mickey Mouse. A couple weeks ago, I found his Mickey ears lying on his floor. I thought it was odd, perhaps Dave and him had played with them, and put them back up on his shelf. They stay up there since they're a lovely embroidered pair from his running buddy that would be trashed if Teddy had his way with them for any amount of time.

Then, about a week later, I was trying to juggle work calls, AJ's school, housework and keep Teddy out of trouble. Let's just say that after Teddy thought we should turn the kitchen into a water park that I determined he needed a bit of a time out. I put him in his room to finish the dishes and decided I'd tackle a bit of school with AJ afterward when Teddy was quietly playing in his room. As AJ and I were reviewing his assignment, a clatter arose from Teddy's room. I flew in there, swear words perhaps a bit uncensored, to discover him standing on top of his 4-foot tall dresser holding onto his shelf that he had just ripped out of the wall ... right next to the shelf with the Mickey ears.

AJ helped me clean up the immediate mess since Teddy had disassembled a tractor figurine, and I had a shelf holding on barely with two screws. That incident made it clear that Teddy could scale his dresser, but we were perplexed how it happened because his dresser is out of view from his camera. I presumed he was hooking his leg on his window ledge to boost himself up, similar to how he scales the back of the Tahoe using the rear windshield wiper. (It's a miracle that hasn't broken yet.)

We determined we needed to figure out how to reconfigure his room because the dresser is important not only to hold his clothes but also to keep the wires to the camera and night light secure from his grasp. But before we could figure that out, I found him with Mickey ears on his floor again. Dave adjusted his camera, so the dresser was in full view. And a few days later, Dave saw him in the early morning hours amble to his dresser and do this:

I still can't believe he was using the tiny handles, that stick out less than an inch, to scale his dresser. That kid needs to try rock climbing when he's safely hooked into a harness. I bet he'd have a blast.

And Dave created a wooden box that is secured to his dresser, preventing him from getting a solid grip on the top ... at least for another year or two. In the one day that box didn't have a top on it, Teddy filled it with every toy in his room and was playing with an empty toy tote when I went in his room.

Never a dull moment with him. Ever.