Did Houdini's mother feel like this?

I'm so tired.

I could fall asleep right now with my head down on the keyboard.

Every mother of young children gets tired like this sometimes. But not every mother of young children has a 2 year old son who could be the reincarnation of Houdini. Or maybe he's a monkey in the disguise of a boy. I don't know.

I've been trying to figure out why no matter when I go to bed, by suppertime I'm ready to sleep for 10 hours. I've been trying to figure out why even though I'm no longer nursing, I've been craving, buying, and consuming every carb I can get my hands on.

A few minutes ago, I finally figured it out. Little monkey boy had gone upstairs, and was suddenly Too Quiet. So I did the 3 second dash up our 2 flights of stairs to see what he was up to. He was up to the top of his brother's nightstand, holding a toy alarm clock and jumping with glee!

It was at this point I realized I've been doing the 3 second dash up our 2 flights of stairs probably up to 50 times a day. That doesn't include all the various reaching, grabbing, carrying, and rescuing from various precarious situations that take place without dashing up the stairs. You know, the garbage can rescue, the fragile item rescue, the what's in your mouth rescue, the precarious climb rescue, etc., etc.

And now, possibly as of today, I can no longer contain him..... anywhere. He can, if he chooses, climb out of his crib. That makes his arsenal complete. He was already able to climb out of his high chair, wiggle out of his stroller (yes, with the seatbelt on), climb over the baby gate (lest you think I hadn't tried that), and escape his playpen. He can (and will) climb anything he can can a toe hold on - all the chairs, all the beds, the back of the couch, the hutch, the bookshelf, the toilet, the sink, the windowsill. He hasn't tried to climb the entertainment center yet, but it's only a matter of time.

And he can take apart most anything he sets his mind to. I found him sucking on a battery once, not because we leave them lying around, but because we recently had several power outages and he managed to figure out how to take the flashlight *apart* to get to them. He has figured out how to take a socket protector out of the wall, how to open a closed door, how to unlatch the window. Fortunately he has not figured out how to open the childproof locks on the dangerous things - at least, not yet.

This child is the very epitome of don't leave your child unattended for even a second. While I've been in the very same room with him I've had to remove an amazing array of things from his mouth. In addition to the battery, I've removed play doh, assorted old food, coins, beads, stickers, small lincoln logs, game pieces, marbles, rocks! (we were camping), dirt, sand, soap, old coffee grounds he scrounged from the garbage, and innumerable bits and pieces of various things he's bitten off with his sharp little teeth. Once he nearly gave me a heart attack when he managed to put an old PUSH PIN that some ding-a-ling left lying around by our bus stop in his mouth! Lest you think I'm careless, to the best of my knowledge the only thing he actually *swallowed* was a few bits from a red fringed mylar balloon that fringed off all over the house. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry over the red glittery poop!

Sooooo.....needless to say, I'm using a lot of extra energy on all that sprinting around the house to keep him out of harm's way. Maybe he'll grow up to be an engineer, or a physicist, or a stunt man.

In the meantime, I've been wondering if I could invent and patent a human sized hamster ball. I think it would go over great for other parents of little Houdini's, don't you?