My Little Monkey

I must admit that I am not the best at surprising Jackson with his gifts. I think this comes in part from Judy and I shopping for each others gift's together and me giving Armando a specific-do-not-deviate-from-me list of what I want for Christmas or my birthday.

I know some people would be horrified, but I've frequently bought Jack's Christmas and birthday gifts while he was with me. When he was younger it wasn't that big of a deal because he would kinda forget about them as soon as I stored the presents out of sight. Unfortunately he is beginning to catch on.

For Jack's birthday I purchased his gifts about a month before his actual birthday. As per usual, he was able to play with the toys (while in their boxes) and I put them into the closet in the guest room that night. This time within the next day or so Jack found the stash and brought them out to play with. This pattern was repeated as he kept finding where I had put the toys.

In my closet there are two levels of built in shelving above where the clothes hang. Thinking I had finally found a way to outsmart my toddler I cleaned out a portion of the very top shelf and put most of the toys up there. Any remaining were put on the lower shelf or in the downstairs closet.

I should have known that it takes more then being too short to thwart a determined toddler when it comes to his precious transformer toys. My little angel had drug over a chair to both closets in an effort to reach the toys. When he realized that he still could not reach, he started using the convenient hangers as a hook to pull the toys down. He would stand on the chair and bat at the toys with the hanger until he would get them. He managed to pull down all the toys on the lower shelf in my bedroom and all the ones from the closet downstairs.

To understand his determination you have to realize that in order to get a chair to the downstairs closet he had to go into the kitchen and grab a chair that isn't really light, pull it through the carpeted living room, around the corner, over to the closet, open the closet door, and pull the chair in. He then stood on both of the chairs fishing with his coat hanger until he managed to pull down the toys. I only hope he shows this type of effort when he starts school.