Welcome to our home. Meet our monkey.

Recently we've had to do a second round of baby proofing in the house. Or I suppose it's toddler proofing. And this time it isn't to save Ben from himself but to save everything else from Ben. He can open three types of doors (including exterior doors), can climb baby gates, turn on faucets, knows how to plug stuff into baby-proof outlets, and can reach just about anything by shoving a chair across the floor and then climbing atop it.

The kid is a mischievous monkey.

Which is good and... exhausting.

Sometimes we creat a giant mess in the house just so I can say 'yes' every once and a while.

Ben's latest trick is that he'll tell me 'bye bye', in the hopes that I'll leave the room and he can get into a bit of mischief. It's quite calculated, really. As in 'bye bye mama, you should leave so I can get into the cupboard and dump all the pancake mix on the floor'.

A little tip: If I were you, stick with honey in your tea the next time you visit us. I'm still picking quinoa out of the sugar.