Handling quicksilver

Okay, dear visitors to PB, so now you have an idea of some of the PB essentials. It's probably time I chatted a little bit more about the pixies. Let's start with the youngest first. Until I dropped a mercury thermometer on the concrete floor in chemistry class one day, I didn't know what 'quicksilver' was. Then, as I chased those little silver balls all over the floor in the vain (and ultimately unsuccessful) effort to clean up before the teacher saw, I understood. They moved like greased lightning and were extremely hard to catch, darting this way and that with ease.

Isn't quicksilver beautiful?

I now handle quicksilver on a daily basis.  His name is Sam.

Oh, to be one and so curious again!  Nothing is beyond him.  He forgets nothing. He remembers exactly where to go to find something I have neglected to remove from his reach.  Even if it was weeks ago. Or even months.

He reaches his pudgy little fingers under my desk to fish out a roll of wrapping paper I have carefully hidden right up the back and unfurls it with a flourish, grinning from ear to ear. He pulls open drawers and tosses out the contents with gay abandon.  He races over to the bathroom on all fours, bottom wiggling in the air, opens the sliding door, stands up, reaches my mascara, crawls back in to show me he has it and then as soon as I exclaim "You scallywaggle!" and wave my finger at him, he chuckles and scampers away, mascara clutched in his chubby little hand.  All of this in about 10 seconds flat.  Yes, quicksilver.

Here he is, caught in the act, rusk in one hand and rifling through my drawer with the other!

I really have to think ten steps ahead of him as his inquisitive little mind leads him to all sorts of places where a baby shouldn't be. I have to move Joshua's Playmobil pirate ship up onto his bed so he doesn't eat the pieces. We have latches on all the cupboards or shoelaces tying door handles together (mind you, the older pixies undo them for him as a joke on me). We have covers on all the powerpoints. His siblings know to remove anything dangerous from his grasp "so he doesn't choke and die, Mummy".

I know all the sounds he makes in his laps of the house and when to pounce on him when I hear a sound I don't like.  Bang, bang - woops, he's opening and closing the oven (I can only use it when he's asleep so he doesn't burn himself). Paper ripping - woops, time to get out the sticky tape to repair that library book. Plastic bag crunching - woops, get him out of that kitchen drawer where he's found the garbage bags (it seems the old 'let's-stretch-a-rubber-band-between-the-drawer-knobs-trick' is insufficient. More permanent measures are required.). I spring up at a millisecond's notice, ready to swoop to protect and retrieve, as required.

Today I found him rifling through my bedside table drawer, only to emerge brandishing my nail scissors. Another thing for me to put up higher in a 'safe place'. Every day, I have to empty the contents of our bedside tables and plonk them onto the bed to keep his pesky little cotton-picking fingers off them. I can't leave any plastic bags in open rubbish bins as he'd find them in a flash. I constantly scour the floorboards for something, anything, he could find and pop into that rosy red mouth of his. Especially those little plastic thingies which seal your loaves of bread. They equal instant death!

But I wouldn't have it any other way.  Even though he keeps me on the edge of my nerves through being eternally vigilant, he has such a zest for life and rambunctiousness which is both endearing and infectious.  I never know what's going to happen next.  God bless my little Quicksilver!

Jane