Cooking Capabilities

Teddy has an interesting relationship with the kitchen. He believes the kitchen sink is his personal waterpark, which often results in some disagreements when the waterpark is closed because I need to actually do the dishes or don't care to clean up after he wanders away from the wave pool.

He can reach our knife block and knows how to open the hideaway door to access it. Most of the time he leaves it alone, but occasionally try to grab a knife and run away because he knows he's not supposed to have a knife. That's always fun to try to safely recover the knife while not cutting either of us. Knock on wood, so far we've been successful.

If food is on the stove, it's likely he'll try to stir it with no concept that pans are hot or recognition when he burns himself. We always try to keep the stirring tools further away because he gravitates to utensils like there's a magnetic draw. He's also been known to use spatulas, giant stirring spoons and various other utensils to eat his food. It's apparently more fun that way ... coming from the child who feels a fork is necessary for graham crackers. He's civilized like that and likes to use utensils. 

When he's protesting that we're starving him, he'll self-serve from the refrigerator or cupboards if we leave them unlocked. Most often, he grabs frozen waffles or pancakes, but he tried to sneak by Dave with a drumstick for breakfast the other day. Not a bad breakfast choice, in my opinion. When that is locked and we're cooking food in the oven, we tell him to check out the magic food box. He'll sit and stare inside the oven, asking repeatedly for what is cooking. He will pull out oven mitts, put them on his hands and wait for us to open the oven door. Yeah, that's not happening. Then he'll often put the oven mitts on us and direct us to the door. That's how we got the display of counting last week. 

We normally keep the oven locked because of Teddy's absolute disregard for safety. In fact, there's times that if we leave it unlocked that Teddy will actually direct us to lock the oven. It's like he sometimes knows he's not trustworthy. However, last week when I was unloading the dishwasher, Teddy determined that he was going to use the oven. Mind you, the oven was completely cool. He put on two hot pads and proceeded to open the oven. Then he managed to crawl on top of the top rack to wedge himself in the oven. I am quite certain that if I wouldn't have pulled him out, after snapping a picture, that he would have completely wedged himself in there and attempted to shut the door to boot.

Rump roast anyone?

I think he might need a few more cooking classes, but this picture cracks me up. We intentionally buy appliances that are least likely to be broken by Teddy, things we can lock, knobs that won't break off or aren't easy to turn. We know they'll be broken eventually because Teddy's a destructive force of nature, but we always hope for a good long spell before repairs or replacements. In case you're wondering, our goal in life is just to keep Teddy alive. Hey, we've succeeded so far!

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.