Little Miss Mischief

Abby is quite the little firecracker. While she is pretty laid back overall, when she wants something she is very persistent. I am working on babyproofing everything, but am having trouble figuring out the right type of gates for our stairs. We have two staircases in our house, and only one of the sets has one opening with two solid walls. All the others are either open on both sides or at least one. We have the regular gate that pressure mounts and that will work on the stairs from the kitchen to the bonus room (with the two solid walls on each side), but still need to find something for the rest of the stairs. There are also three steps leading from the bonus room to the landing where the kids rooms and bathroom are; but they are carpeted and only three. If she takes a tumble down those I don't think she is likely to get hurt, so I will probably leave those alone. Abby is pretty quick when she wants to be and I caught her the other day heading up the stairs from the kitchen to the bonus room....

The look on her face says 'caught red handed!'

Middle Tennessee weather is weird. We are very tornado prone, and most homes here don't have basements including ours, so we spend a good amount of time when its storming in the guest bathroom since it's our safest room in the event of a tornado. Monday we were in there a good 45 minutes waiting for the worst of the storm to go by. Me, Cooper, Abby, and Bailey (the dog) all in a tiny bathroom. 45 minutes was a LONG 45 minutes. We had a few toys and the laptop in there with us to check the weather information out.

Yes, cramped quarters in there. Cooper tickling Abby, and you can see a little of Bailey there too. I love seeing Cooper and Abby playing together, she always laughs and giggles the most when they are together.

Abby hanging out in the 'storm room'

And, now for the Mischief part of this post.... yesterday Cooper and I made some spring (butterfly, flower, tulip and egg) shaped cut out cookies. We had rolled out the dough and used the cookie cutters and had one pan full and ready to go in the oven when the doorbell rang. This whole time Abby was hanging out in her high chair by us in the kitchen where we were working. I went to the door and it was the sprinkler guy who was repairing two of our sprinkler heads and getting the system all up and running for spring. Abby was safe in her high chair so I knew I could talk to the sprinkler guy for a little bit about a slight leak in the back flow preventer (boring, I know, but such is life as a homeowner sometimes). Cooper came with me, and then Bailey escaped out the front door. Just the usual chaos that we have around here. I chased Bailey back inside, got Cooper back in and said good bye to the sprinkler repair man. I get back to the kitchen, ready to get the pan of cookies in the oven and then I saw what had been entertaining Abby the whole time.... she had pulled the pan off of the counter and onto her highchair and had eaten and destroyed almost all of the raw cookies on the pan! She had this look in her eye that you would swear she knew exactly what she had been doing (or was it a sugar rush kicking in already?)! She has this mischievous look about her at times, and it's usually when she's about to do something she shouldn't. Isn't she a little young for knowing that? Anyway, I laughed for a while and Cooper had a meltdown. He was very upset about the pan of cookies that were ruined. I was slightly concerned about just how many of those raw cookies Abby had eaten, but not too much. Without Bailey being on the scene to take care of the dough herself I can only assume Abby ate what was missing which seemed like quite a bit. After I was done laughing I should have taken a picture, but instead Cooper and I gathered the rest of our dough and made some new cookies. They turned out great, we ended up with about 30 cookies that we decorated last night with frosting and spring colored sprinkles. On a somewhat related note, Bailey had her revenge with the cookies - she pulled one of the sheets of decorated cookies off the counter last night and ate a few of the own completed products which led to another meltdown from Cooper. In hindsight it must not have been a great day for cookie baking, but anyway, the point was that Abby has a bit of a mischief streak and I am curious to see how that takes shape as she gets older.

The often seen but hard to capture on camera mischief face...