Captain Destructo strikes again

Heath started calling Samuel Mr. Destructo a few weeks ago, a very apt nickname considering the shenanigans he pulls off, such as pulling everything out of drawers and off shelves and dumping an entire box of spagetti on the kitchen floor - quick as lightening, before I can do anything to stop him. Then, last week we sent some funny pictures to our families, one of which was this (with a smudge for privacy):

My brother, Jeff, wrote back that Samuel looks like a superhero with his goggles on, and we told Jeff that he is a superhero - Mr. Destructo. Jeff suggested it should be Captain Destructo instead, and we all decided that the goggles alone are a fitting costume for him, since it allows him to cap off his adventures by leaving a puddle for me to clean up. (He had the goggles on from the bathtub, to keep water out of his eyes when we washed his hair. He climbed out of the bathtub by himself and took off running around the house to air dry - didn't want a towel and certainly didn't want the goggles taken off. )

Well, today Captain Destructo has been in fine form. I should have known I was in for it earlier this morning when I caught him with the safety scissors that had been on the table, opening and closing them over and over really quickly. I confiscated them and the other pair from the table and put them up high. Then, I had to go help Ethan in the bathroom. He took this opportunity to climb onto the dining room table and sweep everything off it, including a stack of school papers, a chess board and all the pieces, Chutes and Ladders, flash cards, crayons and construction paper, and some instructions and parts leftover from installing a new ceiling fan this weekend. Before I could get that cleaned up, I caught him tearing open the flash cards box and taking them out, so I put those up. Next, he brought me an Animal Baby magazine with the cover newly torn off . He went straight from there to the kitchen, where he picked a couple of items out of the trash under the sink. After I removed him from there and put the items back in the trash, he started putting crayons down the heating vent. After I dug those out and took the crayons away, he asked for a bite of the apple I was eating. I handed it to him, and he threw it back at me without taking a bite, where it landed on the laptop keyboard. At this point, I decided I should take him downstairs where there are more toys and less things to damage. We all headed in the direction of the stairs, and I thought Samuel was following like usual. Instead, I discovered he had stopped at the top of the stairs to throw some shoes down the stairs from the living room. I went and retrieved him and carried him downstairs. Now he's playing with some actual toys, so hopefully his reign of chaos is over for the moment.

It's funny, he will play alone for a long time sometimes, longer than I remember either of my first two playing alone. But when he is not engrossed in toys, he can cause a lot of destruction in a short amount of time! Good thing he's so cute to make up for it.

As a bonus, here are a couple of pictures of Jacob and Ethan, also from the set we sent to family last week. Jacob has really taken off with his reading, and Ethan loves to sit really close and listen to whatever new book Jacob is attempting to master. He even fell asleep on Jacob one evening when we were reading before bed.