Break dance

This may come as a surprise to you: children, believe it or not, tend to break things. I thought, perhaps, our child would be different. I thought that maybe, just maybe, Kyle would be able to look at a fine piece of china, admire its beauty and delicate design, and not be tempted to use it as a Frisbee. That, of course, was a few months ago, when Kyle was about as mobile as a pineapple. Now that he's realized that his arms and legs are more than just things to suck on, Kyle has become a greater threat to some of our prized possessions.

We already have begun the process of moving things higher, as Kyle pushes the limits on how far he can reach. Eventually I will need a ladder to grab any of our glassware. But we haven't been moving everything, since we had thought certain things were safe. For example, we had a couple of tin mugs and plastic margarita glasses placed as decorations on a couple of low shelves near our refrigerator. They didn't seem breakable at all. Sure enough, not long after Kyle first crawled into the kitchen, he found them:



Those were happier times. Kyle would roll the margarita glasses on the floor, testing the laws of physics: an object in motion will stay in motion, especially on a warped kitchen floor such as ours. We were fine with him having fun with the plastic margarita glasses, even though they were family heirlooms dating back to the revolutionary war, when my great-great-great-uncle Gaspard Adams used their glowing green cacti to impale the British soldiers. So you can imagine my sadness when this is how those margarita glasses looked several days later:



It was an abrupt end to Kyle's fun, and to our glasses. The first one seemed to come apart on its own, and I thought that maybe Kyle had nothing to do with it; maybe they were made with some faulty glue from China that simply came undone. I learned soon enough that wasn't the case. As I sat on the floor next to Kyle, I watched him play with the remaining margarita glass. Then, out of nowhere, as if a wrecking ball possessed him, Kyle took the glass and slammed it into the refrigerator, smashing it in two. He then went to play with something else, oblivious to what had just happened. I was left to pick up the pieces. Jennifer and I did not have margaritas that evening.

So now we're living in a constant state of fear for what's next. We had heard rumors that children had the ability to make everything breakable, but I guess you don't realize just how true that is until you experience it first-hand. Kyle has been moving faster lately, and he's been pounding his hands against most things he comes across. I spend a lot of my days following him around, running a checklist through my head as to what's okay for him to break and what's not. I know that the more Kyle explores, the more we'll pick our battles and give up on things ("Well, I guess that 18th-century vase wasn't from a relative we liked very much"). I just hope we have something remaining in one piece by the time he goes to college.