Mellowing monster

Do you think he's gotten easier lately?

Definitely.

I've mentioned before that Lukan can be a bit of a pest. Before he become mobile, I think we had one broken toy. Now we have a collection. He purposely pulls and twists and tugs on everything, until it comes apart. He rips pages out of books. He delights in breaking apart Téo's Lego constructions and train tracks. He throws. He whacks. He tangles. He unplugs.

He opens every drawer he can, and empties their contents. Repeatedly. Same for bins. Toilet brushes are his favourite thing of all, with toilets a close second.

He twists and turns on the change table, standing up whenever he can to turn the lights on and off.

He broke a 1 litre bottle of olive oil on our very absorbent limestone floor. There are chips in the floor all around his high chair from when he's thrown his cutlery down. The brand new table is dented for the same reason. He's broken two plastic plates, my hair dryer, plastic knobs on our toilet, and an electric power plug.

There was no coaching, no coaxing, no direction at all for the Lukanzilla video.

But then, last week, I noticed there's been less trouble. We can leave the bathroom door open and not end up with toilet paper all over the floor. We've been able to untie all the kitchen drawers. He stays on his back during nappy changes. He's not throwing unwanted food on the floor. I took him into a pharmacy and - despite the shelves and shelves of bottles and boxes right at his eye level - he didn't touch a thing. Even more remarkable, he opened a drawer while I was having a shower and when I said no, don't take anything out, he actually listened. He didn't look happy, but he didn't empty it.

Which is all a very welcome development ahead of our plane trip to Sydney in 10 days.