Wednesday, April 25, 2012

The Toddler Strikes Back

Last Friday I yet again cruelly chose to take a shower by myself. Doug started throwing a tantrum by banging on the locked bathroom door, but after a few minutes left to go off and either play or watch the DVD I put on for him (at least that's what he wanted me to think). When I got out of the shower, he ran up to me and said "Mess!". I said "Yep, what else is new?". I had left him with some cheerios and some juice and I was expecting to find cheerios (aka carpet bombs) all over the floor. It's annoying, but not the end of the world.

Instead I found this:

He had over turned his basket of toys all over the floor, but more importantly, he got into the DVD cabinet, which has 'child-proof' locks!

Here's a close up of the cabinet:
Notice the lock casually tossed onto the couch. The lock has a sliding mechanism and loops over the two knobs of the cabinet. My guess is that the lock was left a little loose by our recent house guests and Doug was able to pry it off. I put it back on and told him to take it off and he wasn't able to. Or maybe he was faking... I don't know. We don't even keep his DVDs in there, his are in a drawer in the entertainment center with a different style lock on them. Yet another misadventure in living with a toddler!

Friday, April 6, 2012

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Douglas James, International Sensation

On Saturday night we decided to go to a local Chinese buffet for dinner. Buffets with Doug are fantastic. Because of his age, we rarely have to pay and he gets to eat a ton of food. I'm pretty sure we're ripping restaurants off when we take him.

When we got there, we could see a large tour bus in the parking lot, but it didn't seem to be too crowded otherwise. We went in and got a table right next to the entrance. Doug was already clamoring for food, so it seemed our choice of a buffet was inspired. I took Doug up with me and had him pick out food (he picked out veggies!) and then dropped him off at the table to get my own plate. After we'd been eating a while, Doug stood up in the booth and flirted with the people standing in the foyer behind us. After a few times, I looked over my shoulder to see that Doug was flirting with some older Asian women. Once in a while they'd smile or wave at him. A few minutes later, one of the ladies was playing peek-a-boo with him and then tickling him suddenly. Doug was enjoying this and he didn't seem to be bothering them, so I let it continue. The very next thing we knew, we were surrounded by at least a dozen Asian people, all smiling and waving at Doug. None of them spoke English. It was slightly over whelming. They gave Doug high fives, held up fingers to see how old he was and pinched his cheeks. Doug was a bit staggered by his sudden audience, but seemed to take it all in stride. They gave Doug kisses and candy, he sent kisses there way too. It was kind of an awkward 'well, now you've said hello, we're eating, but you're still here' sort of thing that lasted waaay longer than it should have. Finally one of the tourists who spoke English came over and was telling us that they were saying that Doug was cute and wanted to take a picture of him. We consented and after a couple more high-fives they went on their way. Hopefully they were able to see that not all American children are brats. Possibly the oddest experience we've ever had as parents.