Over the past week or so, we've been making a concerted effort to leave the gates in our house open. We probably SHOULD be to the point now where Gabe is allowed free roam of the place, but he's so far proven incapable of staying out of trouble in the rooms where trouble can be the messiest or most bothersome for everyone else (the kitchen, my office, and the bathroom, where he's fond of opening every container or box of food he can find, pushing every button he can reach on the computer, and running and pouring water all over the place, respectively). But we know that he needs to learn to not do these things and the only way we can drill that into his head is with constant badgering AFTER he's already done it. So we're leaving gates open for extended periods now.
And yesterday he was enjoying his freedom to go up and down the stairs as much as he wanted to--and he wanted to A LOT. He also wanted to experiment with gravity, so he spent much of the day throwing things down the stairs, but that's beside the point.
He also discovered how delicious donuts are yesterday. He'd had donuts, once or twice before, but I guess he didn't remember that he'd had them before (and we rarely have donuts in the house, so it's not something he'd have the chance to get used to), because he went, to put it mildly, ape-shit crazy for them yesterday. How's the saying go? Every time a little boy has a donut, a dietitian gets run over by a beer truck? Well, five dietitians met their makers yesterday. Yeah, that's right. I'm not proud. Gabe ate five donuts yesterday. Well, mostly. He tended to leave anywhere from a bite to a half a donut lying around when he was bored with it, but he MOSTLY ate five donuts.
The first two Libby gave him around breakfast time and kindled in him the kind of love for a food that I've rarely seen him exhibit. The other three he got himself thanks to his newfound access to the kitchen.
We left them sitting on the counter--which he's not really able to reach up to yet, so we thought we were safe. He left them alone for several hours, but then, in the middle of the afternoon, he showed up in the living room holding a donut in his hand. I went into the kitchen and the box was still on the counter, open and one donut short, but it still looked like it should be out of his reach. So I put the box on the stove on the back burner, which was way too far away for him to reach. And he left them alone again until after dinner.
Then, around 6:30, he went upstairs and things got quiet for a bit, which always makes us nervous. Usually, if Gabe is quiet it means that he's either sleepy and in one of those glorious few moments when he will sit quietly and play or watch TV or he's up to no-good. Since he hadn't been acting sleepy yet, we assumed he was up to no-good. Then we heard some clunking on the stairs.
I took a look and found him bringing his little green stool (the one that he discovered he could use to reach the light in our bedroom all those months back) awkwardly down the stairs.
"No, honey," I said. "You need to leave that upstairs. It's too awkward for you to carry down. You will fall and hurt yourself. Plus, you need it to get into your bed."
"Stool downstairs," he responded.
"Why do you need the stool downstairs?" I queried.
"Stool downstairs," he insisted.
I sighed, as I often do. "OK. But let me bring it down so you don't fall." So I went up the stairs and carried the stool down and set it in the dining room.
He came down the stairs then nonchalantly went about his business, joining us in the living room for a little bit to distract our attention away from the stool we just brought down and the lull us into a false sense of security. Then, when we were again distracted by the show we were watching, he went back into the dining room, picked up the stool, and disappeared.
Libby was the first to notice the stool was gone and Gabe was quiet again--and it only took her a few moments from the time he left the living room. So she got up to check on his whereabouts.
He was standing on the stool in the kitchen. The box of donuts was open on the stove and he was pulling out number four. Our first instinct was to get the camera, but we couldn't find it because we'd used it earlier and didn't put it back where it belongs (by "we" I mean Libby). When we eventually did find it, we snapped a few pictures of the aftermath, but failed to catch him in the act. After he got caught, he just smiled at us then picked up his stool, donut in hand, and brought it back into the dining room. He carefully set it down in the exact spot where I had put it earlier and went about eating his donut.
Donut number 4 and a guilty looking boy.
By this point we confronted him about the "We just said no more donuts tonight" aspects of our earlier discussion on healthy eating, so he put the donut down and went into the living room. He returned to reclaim the donut less than a minute later.The fifth donut, then, was entirely our fault. After this little adventure, we forgot to put them back out of reach, and he went in for another one about ten minutes before bedtime. Miraculously, it didn't affect his sleep even a little bit. Actually, he went to sleep faster than he has for a week or two, which seems odd to me. It did, however, affect MY sleep. Since I am the human garbage disposal in our house, and I have a thing about wasting food, I was the one who got to clean up all of the donut remnants around the house, and I suffered for it to the tune of sugar-induced heartburn all night. Thanks, Krispy Kreme, you and your sugary pastries are bastards.
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