All this, and she can't even walk yet

Lucy is a tornado of mess. There is no other way to describe it. She twirls from the dining room, where she dumps out her snack of cheerios and crawls through them until they are scattered to the four corners of the earth, to the kitchen, where she strips the refridgerator bare of its magnets, pulls out sundry napkins and plastic wraps from the cabinets, terrorizes the cat's food and water bowls, and pulls apart the play kitchen. This all in of about 20 minutes as I attempt to throw dinner together. I balance Finn's demands for a snack, a TV show, help with a post-pee zipper, a better TV show, as I preheat and chop and microwave and yelp "No Lucy" as she purposefully turns her bottle upside down and watches the milk drip, drip, drip all over the floor. I have a floor covered in dried milk, despite all my best efforts to clean, to prevent. Admittedly, my best efforts are by no means good.


Exhibit A: Cheerios - You Always Hurt The Ones You Love


Exhibit B: Orderly Kitchens Are Not Her Thing

Lucy pulls all the books out of the bookshelves, she yanks the mail and school papers, piece by piece, off of the coffee table and onto the floor. She runs her hand in a crazed "wax on, wax off" pattern across her highchair tray, creating food projectiles that reach beyond the TWO splat mats we have, to the white walls, the cream-colored carpeting. She pulls folded laundry out of the basket, and unrolls the toilet paper every chance she gets. She has a preference for chewing on shoes and socks which, while not messy per se, is gross and odd.

She does all this, and then giggles when we tell her no, when we shout "stop!". Then, as we turn around to assess the damage and initiate reconstruction efforts, she takes off for the 8 miles of staircases we have in our house, giggling once more as she attempts to break her neck and/or give us heart attacks.

It is exhausting, exasperating, and great fun to watch. But mostly exhausting: