Mischief

Clara has gotten herself into her first mischief recently.

After changing her diaper one day earlier this week, I left her playing in her room while I removed a trash bag full of dirty diapers.  When I returned, I discovered she had crawled out of her room, down and across the hallway, into the bathroom, had pulled up on the toilet, and was gleefully splashing around in the water.  And all in less than a minute!  It was pretty humorous.  Needless to say, I won't be casually leaving the bathroom door open anymore.

Then today, Clara managed to get the Kleenex box down from its perch on our end table.  She proceeded to rapidly pull the magically reappearing Kleenex out of their box one after the other, successful littering the floor with about ten of them before I noticed and confiscated her fun.

As her decision-making skills continue to develop, I have decided to set a couple of household "expectations" to work on with her, after being encouraged by Jan (my mother-in-law) that she's old enough.  I figure we'll start with this and then work up from there:

1. Sit in the bathtub (tough for a baby who's just figured out how much fun standing is)
2. Don't play with the Blu-ray Player (it's so temptingly accessible!)
3. Lay still during diaper changes (they didn't cover "how to diaper a baby who's crawling away from you" in childbirth class)

Clara seems to have some formulating understanding of the word NO.  Although at this point, when I say "Clara, No," as she inches her way toward the Blu-ray Player, she turns and gives me the happiest, most beautiful beaming smile.  I think she enjoys it because I said her name and looked directly into her eyes to communicate my little message.  Many times she turns away from her mischief to crawl my direction, possibly getting distracting by one of the toys strewn across the floor in the process.  Otherwise I go intervene, redirecting her and reiterating "no" to help her understand it's meaning.  So far she's been accepting of that.  She's pretty happy-go-lucky in general.  Hopefully she'll be easy on her parents

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