This boy...

If you've seen Jackson lately and noticed that he looks a little, well, nasty, please don't think I am a bad mom.  I do bathe him, sometimes more than once a day!  But I can't seem to keep up with his messiness.  Whenever he finds anything in gel or liquid form, his first reaction is to rub it into his hair.  Some of the things he puts into his hair are really hard to wash out i.e. lip gloss & toothpaste.  Sometimes I simply don't have time to wash it out like this morning when I dragged him to Hannah's preschool to watch her be the class spotlight with the sticky milk he poured out of a cereal bowl onto his head. Or the day we had to go to an appointment with strawberry scented shampoo rubbed into his scalp.

He has an uncanny ability to find any makeup in the house and uses it to decorate himself and other things.  Today his jeans and shoes have bright pink lipstick smeared into them and of course he has eyeshadow on his nose.  You're probably thinking, "why don't you keep those things out of reach?"  Well, nothing is out of his reach.  He has learned to drag around stools and chairs and uses them to climb into the highest cupboards.  I frequently find him standing in one of the sinks with the water turned on.  I pray he doesn't fall and break his head open someday.

Notice his greasy hair?  That is the lipgloss he rubbed in.   I finally figured out that dish soap was the only way to get it out.

There are always things floating in the toilet for me to fish out:  full rolls of toilet paper, toothbrushes and headbands.  He climbs in the pantry and dumps out full boxes of cereal or bags of pretzels (at this moment the contents of a brand new box of cereal are dumped out into one of the kitchen chairs).  He opens the fridge and rolls soda cans across the floor.  He crumbles up cookies and mashes them into the carpet.  Today he climbed into my lap and dumped out the bowl of salsa I was eating.  When he is done eating his food, he throws it on the floor.

He empties the closet of its shoes and the shelves of their books.  He opens dresser drawers and removes all the contents, his favorite is Jack's drawer full of scrubs. He dumps out buckets of toys and doesn't even play with them.  He removes every pillow from every couch every single day.  If he finds a pencil or pen he writes on the walls with it (thank goodness for magic eraser).  He sticks stickers to the windows.  One day he came to me and said, "Look Mommy! Stickers!"...he was covered in postage stamps.  He unravels spools of ribbon and toilet paper.  He rips apart books and any paper he can get his hands on.

He loves to push buttons and unplug anything.  He erases numbers in my cell phone every day (they really need to make that "lock" feature more child-proof).  If he finds my wallet he quickly empties it and drags my cards around.

Come to my house at any given moment and you will likely think a tornado just hit.  I can't keep up with him. Trying to is like shoveling snow while it is still snowing.  Hannah was never like this at all so I find myself unprepared to deal with it.

I love my little guy with all my heart.  The funny things he says and does make us laugh every day.  I am trying my best to take the messes and naughtiness in stride, but there are moments when he pushes me to my limit.  I recently found a children's book called, "No! David!" and it brought tears to my eyes because it described Jackson completely.  I wanted to record this now so I can look back and laugh when I send him on his mission, which I know will come in a blink of an eye.  And so that he can look back when he has his own little monster and see that he is just getting his payback.  I love you Jack Jack!