Mischief

Benny's silences fill the mind with unpleasant possibilities.  Is he using the baster as a water gun?  Plugged in the toaster and making his own breakfast?  Building a tower out of a highchair and inverted laundry basket to reach the chips on the top shelf?  Pasting coloring book pages to the table?  Attaching the plunger to the sliding glass door?  The possibilities are only limited to his imagination.  He has a very vivid imagination.
    Benny loves to share his imaginings with me.  We play what he calls, "the cloud game," as we swing at the park.  Some days the sky is an endless expanse of blue, but most days the weather provides plenty of fodder for the imagination.  It really doesn't matter what I see, as long as I dutifully take my turn.  After awhile all the clouds look like dinosaurs or fish and I start casting wildly around for more variety.  Benny never runs out of ideas. Maybe he really sees all of that in the clouds.
    Benjamin is--as my mom says--all boy. Everything he does is big, fast, hard.  Even his hugs and kisses, if you blink, you miss it.  If you don't brace yourself, you get knocked over and have only yourself to blame.  Benny is adamant, it's anyones fault but his own.  Always.  Because of Benny's crazy churning limbs, he gets hurt.  A lot.  He falls off of furniture, steps, chairs, tricycles, fences and toilets.  Runs into siblings, cars, walls, doors and cactus.  This is also never his fault.  As he wails his hurts to the entire neighborhood, the words, "you didn't catch me!" hiccup throughout.  Apparently I am supposed to be physic.  A common mother trait.

A run-in with a cactus.

    His entire body is in a constant flux of healing bruises and boo-boos.  Knees a permanent purple as tumble on top of tumble attempts to heal.  Elbows get hit hard, the head is constantly in need of a pain numbing kiss.  We finally got stitches a few months ago.  Four needed to close the gash on his scalp, courtesy of his brother's improving golf swing.