Pants-Free Parenting — Unhinged: A tale of a son’s destruction

Just the other night, at a friend's house my baby walked up to me and handed me a long metal pin. 'Oh no,” he said and walked away.

'What is that?” My friend asked.

I only recognized it because many years ago, I'd seen my dad take a bathroom door off its hinges to rescue my sister who had locked herself in.

'It belongs to your door,” I said. 'My baby just took the pin out of the hinge.”

At 19 months old, I am deeply terrified of my little, goobery, silly son. His fluffy blonde hair sticks up and he has a gap between his two front teeth. At first appearance, he is a happy little toddler who likes to ask for candy and make lion noises.

But at 19 months, he is pulling pins out of hinges. At 17 months he pulled a cabinet door off. A week ago, as I prepared dinner, he pushed a stool over to the counter, climbed up and pulled a knife off the magnet strip on the wall. When I turned around, he was stabbing his snack cup and yelling, 'Cut! Cut! Cut!”

His mischief doesn't end at weapons and hinges. My 3-year-old has been creating what she calls 'playgrounds” out of couch cushions. Her favorite thing to do is lean the cushion against the couch and call it a slide. She often carefully aligns the cushions at an angle and stands back to admire her work. That's when the baby comes in and one by one tips over each cushion, yelling, 'Ta da!”

She collapses into tears and he smiles, standing back to admire his work: destruction.

The other night, after a particularly trying day of shenanigans, I dumped him into the bath. The bathtub is the one place he (usually) sits still and plays nicely. As I sat watching him play, he turned to me and yelled, 'Splash!” and then leaned back into the water.

I was able to stick my hand underneath his head and save him from drowning. But when I tried to sit him up, he screamed and threw a wash cloth at my face. Bath time was over. Bedtime came early.

That night, as we lay in bed, savoring the silence, my husband said, 'That kid is going to be a handful one day.”

I laughed. 'One day? He is a handful right now.”

We were silent again and maybe just a little apprehensive.

' Lyz Lenz is a writer, mother of two and hater of pants. Email her at eclenz@gmail.com or find her writing at LyzLenz.com.