A former brother-in-law summed it up well when he announced why he liked three-year old Mike:
He's ornery, he wears hats, and he eats fish.
Often Mike wore more than one hat--fireman, cowboy, baseball, racing helmet, army, construction hard hat, way-too-big stocking cap-- in various configurations. He only played soccer two years because soccer is a seriously hat-deficient sport. He had to make do with a neon yellow sweatband!
T-ball was better. It had caps, and he could wear one of my clip-on earrings to pretend he was Ruben Sierra. We cranked up the volume on the car tape player for "We Are the Champions" on the way to T-ball games!
Harry Houdini's mother had a tough life. She has my complete sympathy and respect. Danger Baby was an Eighties escape artist. I had to tie his shoelaces together when he sat in his baby carseat to keep him from climbing out. He could stand up in the crib and tear the wallpaper off the wall.
I never could keep him confined to the grocery cart child seat. I would stop to read the nutritional info on a can of soup, and Danger Baby would be three aisles away. In the time it took me to select a head of lettuce, he could climb out and load six dozen fresh bakery cinnamon pull-aparts into the grocery cart.
The only thing Danger Baby couldn't escape was the electric mixer beater. While licking the beater he managed to get it hooked over both his teeth and his chin. Jaws!
In 1986 we took a family vacation to Yellowstone. For at least six hundred miles Danger Baby played with a Matchbox tractor while sitting in the carseat, then threw it on the floor, hollered "rackoo-rackoo" until the tractor was retrieved, then repeated the cycle. On this vacation his claustrophobic tendencies were revealed as he ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY refused to sleep in the tent. After a long highway drive, I ended up sleeping in the car while Mike slept in the carseat, and his dad and brother slept in the comparatively relaxing and luxurious tent. In the Tetons I had to keep Mike zipped into my sleeping bag to keep him from burning himself testing the cabin woodstove. At Yellowstone I had to keep him from falling into the geysers, and from completely freaking out when Old Faithful blew. At Jewel Cave he suffered a total spelunko-wacko panic attack that disrupted the whole tour group, and he never did like elevators after that.
Danger Baby really wanted to be a stunt rider. He watched a "Reading Rainbow" show about rodeos, and took to standing on the seat of the wooden rocking horse while wearing the "Lyle the Crocodile" Halloween costume, blue snowboots, and as many hats as he could balance on his head.
While reckless, Danger Baby was also very caring and attentive to his imaginary baby alligators. Whenever they fell off the back of his red tricycle he would stop and carefully help them back into position. Danger Baby has turned out funny, considerate, focused, planning, frugal, sentimental...
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