The boy has done some pretty gross stuff...

Just by virtue of being both a baby - and therefore not in control of bodily functions - and also a boy, my child has done some pretty disgusting things. Besides the obvious afore mentioned bodily functions(I know you are creative enough to imagine what icky things I refer to without me spelling it out), he's eaten Play Doh, sucked his thumb after touching a car tire and played with rocks in the icky apartment parking lot. To name just a few things. I'm a little grossed out by something he does at least three times a week. Its just part of being a parent.

But today, *shudder*. I was in the living room and the boy was in the kitchen. (It's not as bad as it seems. I was maybe 11 feet away from him and the place is totally childproofed.) The pantry door was open and I heard some banging around - damn, cheap apartment pantry door doesn't latch worth a darn - and thought that he was rearranging the canned goods which is a normal occurrence. This goes on for probably two minutes. Seriously, about 120 seconds. He comes out from behind the island to look at me and he's chewing something. As I leap toward him to pull the nearly certain choking hazard out of his mouth and he looks at me innocently and says "Ba." "This is no time for sheep impressions! What do you have in your mouth!?!"

Well, he was telling me. No, we didn't have mutton lying around the pantry. For breakfast each morning the boy has a bowl of oatmeal and a NutraGrain bar - or at least part of one. This morning he was eating his bar and the very last bite I put in his mouth and he chewed it once and spit it out. Fine. I put the rejected bit back into the wrapper and threw it away. You see where this is going, don't you?

"Ba" was him saying "bar" with his mouth full of it. The banging around wasn't cans, but rather him learning to open the trashcan. Thank goodness it was (mostly) on top and it was his food, but it was still food out of the trashcan. I am officially grossed out BIG TIME.

I'm going to have to figure out how we are going to keep him out of that trashcan. I know the obvious solution is to get a more complex trash can that he can't open - thought the one we have shouldn't be easy for someone just 19 months old - but we spent an atrocious amount of money on that trash can with the idea that we would be using it for a long time and I'm reluctant to get rid of it.

I just have to figure out how to be smarter than the baby. Surely I can figure that out at least until he's five or so, right?