Best Buds

Joey and Katelyn are quickly becoming fast friends. He loves that Katelyn tries to keep up with him, chasing him around the apartment, hiding under blankets in fits of giggles, and causing mass destruction just for the heck of it. Katelyn really enjoys the extra attention from her big brother and has a monkey-see, monkey-do attitude. I have a feeling in a few short months Joey will be yelling, "JUMP!" and Katelyn's response will be, "how high?" I'm trying to prepare myself for 2 potential trouble-makers that could get into some seriously troubling situations together over the next 15-20 years.

At the end of the hallway we have a gate that stops the children from venturing into the bathroom and 2 kids bedrooms. When the kids are awake and playing I usually have the gate up, not because they can't play in their rooms, I'm just trying to contain the mess. If we spend the morning at home, (as we did today) Joey usually requests to go play in his room at some point. (He does not actually go in there to play, he grabs all of the binkies and blankies that he can find in his and Katelyn's beds and lays on the floor, but that is a blog post for a different day...) This is usually OK with me, as it breaks up the monotiny and gives the babies a chance to play without their competing-for-attention brother all up in their business.

Today, once he had is fill of comfort time, Joey returned to the opposite side of the gate and called out for Katelyn and "EEE-ah." Then he proceeded to run from one end of the hallway to the other just to get a good laugh of encouragement from his sisters. He somersaulted, danced, spun in circles, and acted like a wild animal while they stood at the gate in fits of giggles. After several minutes of this, Olivia moved on to something else while Katelyn continued egging on her brother. The two of them then shook the gate until it collapsed to the floor, I heard a suspicious, "Come on, Katelyn," and within seconds they had tossed all of the diapers within reach from the changing table around the babies' room, and they were about to move on to the bookcase. The part that makes me nervous is that seeing me did not phase them. They just worked faster and laughed louder. Cute, right?

Not so much.

Sure, it's cute to picture these two young children chasing each other around a baby-proofed apartment pulling things off of shelves just to make more work for their mother. But someday it will be more severe infractions. I'm having visions of phone calls from the school principal to tell me that Joey and Katelyn started a food fight in the cafeteria. And what will I say. Probably something like, "yea, I saw that one coming when they were 1 and 2 year olds."

Will Olivia join in on this "lets get into as much trouble as we can" bandwagon? Maybe. Right now she enjoys watching from a protected place (like the high chair or my hip) but I wouldn't put it past her to get involved. When and if that day comes I will be running away. Fast.