sophiems - He IS driving me nuts, but I really meant it to be a somewhat humorous anecdote. What happened to my neighbor (while, I'm sure, scary for everyone involved) is something I can easily imagine happening here, in the not so distant future. Rilen's just the kind of kid who would figure out how to escape the house and go exploring... he's just not tall enough, or quite mobile enough... yet.
I think part of our problem is that he's almost ready to walk... letting go of furniture for up to a minute, letting go and twisting to something nearby, etc. He tries to do pull-ups on his highchair, the kitchen table... his feet do sometimes even come off the floor for a couple seconds! Now he can reach the bottom part of the stereo, and loves pressing the eject button on the cassette player.
I do TRY to spend undivided time with him... rolling balls back & forth, active songs (itsy bitsy spider, etc)... he just tends to ignore me, most times. He'd rather do his toy rounds: 8 notes on the electronic keyboard, 2 balls in his ball-drop toy, stop to chew on a teether for 5 seconds, stand at the TV & change channels & turn it on/off a few times, pull some books off the shelf, drop to the floor to look at the book for 30 seconds, go bang on his xylophone... then off to the kitchen to split time between emptying cabinets & shelves, playing with his play table, beeping his toy dashboard... that's all of about 10 minutes activity for him.
We've tried pulling out only a couple toys at a time, but he just gets bored even faster, and gets even more "investigative".
I'm sure he'll eventually settle down... maybe when he's a teenager.
