little tikes

My nephews are visiting. One is a six month old the other is three years old. The little one is easy to handle, mainly because he can't run around screaming his head off. His older brother on the other hand is a different story. I burn up a lot of calories chasing after this one. He wants to get into everything and winds up messing up things. That's why we hid all of our precious belongings in our rooms and the basement. He can't get to them there. Of course he tries to get in banging on the door begging to be let in. We ignore him and hope he loses interest, eventually he does.

But he's not that bad. He more than makes up for his whirlwind behavior by being exceptionally cute. There was this one time when we were watching Terminator 3. He didn't take any interest until the chase scenes came on. He was mesmerized by the explosion and the wanton destruction. Afterwards I hear the words "I wanna break car" uh-oh I thought what have I done. He ran around screaming "I wanna burn and break car!"

I only had myself to blame. I remember wanting to imitate everything I saw on TV. We still do that to a certain extent. If Will Smith is sporting a new pair of Ray Bans we must have them too. Anyway I just couldn't abandon the kid after getting him all riled up. So I taught him how to release his energy in a creative manner. I took his building blocks and made a wall. Then I smashed some of his toy cars through the wall. "I wanna do it!" he takes the car from me and smashes it into a real wall. He laughs with glee. "I break car" and he did a bang up job. The tires were pushed in plus the plastic lights were cracked up. Which is why we don't by him expensive toys.

I wonder what will happen when the other one grows up and the two of them team up...