Our Picasso

This morning we awoke to our mischievous 3 year old opening his bedroom door, so very proud of himself for climbing out of his crib for the first time.  Upon walking into his room it was evident that he enjoyed his new found freedom, all the clothing was removed from his dresser and strewn everywhere and toys were dumped.

In the last few weeks our son has also mastered undressing himself and has Houdini like skills at this.  As we want him to stay warm and his dressing skills are no where near his undressing skills we have been trying to keep a step ahead of him, first it was pjs with fasteners, then putting them on backwards, and right about the time he mastered removing backwards pjs he took up artwork with the contents of his diaper.  So then we applied duct tape to the fasteners of the pjs he was wearing backwards and secured the diaper with duct tape, all to no avail.  It is seeming that we have run out of options on the Houdini/Picasso front so hopefully this stage passes soon.

As much as it is a challenge keeping up to the newly acquired skills of our three year old we are also very thankful that he is making these progressions.  And although he has some special needs he has surpassed his 5 siblings closest in age to him on many accounts.  Not all of his newly acquired skills have been negative, he has mastered using the potty, he can climb in and out of his car seat, and he is helpful to his older, less able siblings.  His creative skills will be tamed into more functional and appropriate skills hopefully sooner than later.

When raising children with special needs you can get stuck thinking of all the functional things that they aren't able to do and you forget along with mastering these skills come some negative skills.  So we will focus on the positives as we are sending him back to bed for the umpteenth time and cleaning the walls from the latest artistic creation.