on Reese

I submitted the following entry for our local Early Childhood PTA newsletter and it appeared in the March issue:

He was about nine months old when I had an inkling of an idea that our first son and second child would be very different from his sister. He had just nipped me with his newish pearly whites while I was breastfeeding him. My reaction was to jump and mildly scold him for biting me. His reaction was to giggle. That night, I wryly predicted to my husband that Reese would have quite a sense of humor as he grew.

Then, Reese began to crawl. In parental defense of having to constantly chase a very active infant, we devised a creative arrangement of the living room furniture to keep him blocked into a safe space. My husband was part of the barricade, which worked well until Reese sensed Dave was distracted (usually by our 2 1/2 year old daughter) and then he'd make a bolt for the "hole in the fence." We took to calling him "McGyver."

When our third child was born, Reese was 18 months old and his sister was three. As I wanted to breastfeed our newest addition but couldn't quite manage it with his two energetic siblings running around, I ended up securing them in their shared bedroom during Luke's feeding times. Their bedroom had a couple of twin beds, two dressers, a night table, a few books and toys and not much else. It was a room that was fairly childproof as it didn't have so much as a lamp to knock over or "experiment" with. However, Reese thought up the idea to scale the dressers and use them as launching points for jumping onto the beds. Brianna (the older of the two) thought this was a great idea and joined in on the game. Our attempts to put the kabosh on their fun failed as the childproof locks we installed on the drawers didn't exactly work as advertised. So we resigned ourselves to securing the dressers to the walls and praying we wouldn't have to make any trips to the emergency room.

Nap time also was a chance for Reese to get into mischief. Like taking off his diaper. His dirty diaper. More than once. My husband and I decided we better up the ante in the staying-one-step-ahead-of-your-child department or face having to de-poop the bedroom every day. First we tried putting the diaper on backwards so he couldn't reach the tabs. Didn't work. So we broke out the packing tape and scissors. Twice around his waist with the end of the tape secured at the back and the problem was solved. Although, it did feel a little strange having to cut the diaper off our son every time he needed to be changed. But a parent's gotta do what a parent's gotta do.

 I often chuckle when I think of how aptly Reese is named. Reese means "enthusiastic" and "Matthew" means "gift of God" and he certainly is that!