Jonah Strikes Again

The face of mischief. Jonah is thy name.

You never know when the Toddler Terror is going to strike. He creeps around the kitchen cabinets on his tiptoes, his hand blindly patting the top of the counter looking for something, anything to grab and destroy. He searches for the remote control so he can push the white button and order $10 pay-per-view movies—in Japanese. He grabs the digital camera, all the while saying, “No! No! No!” and smiling as he runs away, snapping photos of himself, the walls and the floor.

Oh, and this is what he’s done to the magnetic calendar that hangs in our schoolroom:

What’s today’s date? Yeah, I don’t know, either…

At bedtime, he hangs over the gate on his bedroom door, yelling “Nigh-night!” and making fake snoring sounds to get laughs from his brothers across the hall.

Whatever you do, you don’t want to let that child run free in the bathroom.

We really didn’t intend to allow him access to the bathroom.

But he figured out doorknobs, and sneaked in anyway.

We thought we’d caught him within moments, before he had time to do any real damage. We whisked him out of the room, and when we discovered his hands were wet, subjected him to lengthy hand-washing. And that was the end of that.

Or so we thought….

Until Zach entered the bathroom to brush his teeth and found all the toothbrushes missing. Not just the toothbrushes but the ceramic pineapple that holds them as well. Just, gone.

They weren’t on the floor, or in the toilet. Then Zach looked in the bathtub and let out a primal scream.

Earlier, we’d washed a load of Jonah’s cloth diapers. And the diaper pail was filled with water and bleach and left to soak in the bathtub. And that is where the missing toothbrushes floated.

So we all had a good laugh, I found some new brushes in the bathroom cabinet, and we installed doorknob covers on the bathroom door.

But later, I thought about how much Jonah loves brushing his teeth, and how odd it would be if he hadn’t given his mouth a little scrub after dipping his brothers’ toothbrushes into the diaper pail’s bleachy water.

So if his teeth look a little extra-white the next time you see him, you’ll know why.