More Puccini and Peter at Chez Kosina

Peter the baby toddler has entered a new stage of development. We'll call this the Climbing Stage. Here is how it works. Erika will be in the kitchen, doing something that requires near-constant attention like toasting walnuts. (I know, I know, I've tried to tell her to stick to something simple like Egg McMuffins, but she refuses to listen). Peter, in the mean time, will be in the other end of the apartment (the playroom), doing god knows what.

Every few minutes Erika runs down the hall to see what Peter is doing. She does this more frequently when things get quiet because as all mothers know, a quiet baby toddler is a baby toddler who has found something so dangerous/interesting as to be completely absorbed for however long it takes to gravely injure himself.

Now, here comes the Italian opera. This morning it's Tosca. Appropriately dramatic and tragic for the variety of tableaux that Erika is greeted with when she peeks around the door frame:

1. Peter sitting innocently, *reading a book*!!!
   
2. Peter standing with both hands on the cat, fists full of fur in each hand
   
3. Peter STANDING on the dining room chair next to a large window, giggling
   
4. Peter sitting calmly on a cushion, playing with daddy's sock
   
5. Peter struggling valiantly to wiggle up onto the dining room chair, which has now been wedged between the table and the sofa to discourage mounting
   
6. Peter sitting calmly on the sofa, looking perplexed (how IN THE WORLD did he manage to climb up there???)
   

sigh. This is how Erika has lost so much weight. It takes her two and a half hours just to prepare breakfast, and by then it's lunch time and she's thinking "Why bother?". We really should go back to the restrictive child gates in every room, but then Peter spends all of his time trying to climb up Mommy instead of chairs and tables. Equally hard to prepare a meal with a whining toddler attached to your leg.

So when do we get to the Can't Stop Folding Laundry stage? Or, better yet, the Obsessive Kitty Petting stage? Guess we'll find out.

Pictures. Yeah, I know. Working on it.