In Nathan's Room

One downside to Nathan's sleeping in a big-boy bed is that he has access to his whole room when we're not with him. (Which for him is probably an upside, actually.) When he moved out of the crib last spring, we had to strip his room down of all toys (except the stuffed animals he sleeps with) and pretty much all the furniture. His room was just the bed and his dresser. Something like bare-bones toddler barracks.

Still he manages to make mischief when he's in his room, "sleeping."

At least once a week, he dumps the entire contents of his dresser (yes, every drawer) into his hamper. Well, we think he first dumps it onto the floor and plays with it and then puts it in the hamper. We're basing this on the fact that when one of us gets out of bed (which we finally do when we hear him talking about the big mess -- those are the magic words) and walks around upstairs, he starts singing the clean up, clean up song. Apparently he doesn't understand that if it starts in the dresser and ends in the hamper, we can still tell he's been into it.

After he goes down for nap or bedtime, he waits for us to close the door and then promptly gets out of bed to look out the window. In my opinion, there's not much to see, but if you're Nathan, there is a fascinating world of things that go to stare at. Which mostly consists of our neighbors' cars and truck. But keeping us abreast of our neighbors' comings and goings is an integral part of Nathan's duties to our family, apparently.

Anyway we hear him talking about Drew's truck or Amy's car and then we know he's not in bed anymore. But if he hears us walking to his room, he races back into bed and puts his thumb in his mouth and plays possum. Did you know a 2-year-old can do that??? He's tricky, I tell you.

If we do manage to catch him still standing by the window, the guilty look on his face is hilarious, and we always crack up (after reprimanding him and putting him back in bed, of course). He's gotten so good at hearing us coming towards his room that now we sometimes have to go outside his window to catch him in the act. We just point a finger and stare sternly and he'll get back in bed. (I took this one picture during naptime before reprimanding him, since I actually find it funny even though I don't want him to know that.)
And on Friday mornings (garbage truck day) he gets a little frantic wrestling the blinds to see all the trucks that come by if they're early enough that he's still supposed to be in bed. Which is why his blinds are all bent up and crooked. Thank you, Solid Waste Services of Raleigh.

Nathan's Santa present this year was a secondhand armchair for his room, mostly so we can have a place to sit and read with him (or where he can sit and read by himself). But I think it's just given him a more comfy spot to spend time gazing out the window. :) But for all his antics, there are some sweet moments too. We often hear him singing alone in his room (sometimes we actually stalk the monitor to hear it; he sings so much better alone than he does for us!)... what we usually hear is some mash-up (oh yeah, I watch Glee, I know the lingy-loo) of his favorite songs. You know, something along the lines of how Old MacDonald had a truck that Jesus loved with a vroom vroom there because the Bible tells me so. Sometimes it's a racecar or a big truck, but usually just a truck.

And either way, it's sweet enough to remind me that it's worth cleaning and re-sorting clean clothes from dirty in his hamper most mornings, if it means he has the freedom and independence to let the creative juices flow. But I'm still not giving up the baby monitor. :)