We opted for a wooden picket fence because we had grown used to the vast expanse across our yard and our back-door neighbors’ and didn’t want to obstruct that view. We live on a corner lot along the main artery of our subdivision and were loathe to cocoon ourselves behind a six foot privacy fence.

When Nathan got a little bigger (i.e., turned four back in March), Mr. Andi boldly declared, “When the weather is nice, you can just open the door and let him run free. How great will that be?”

Famous last words.

Spring was consumed with Sarah Kate’s surgery and recovery, and summer along the gulf coast is ridiculously hot and humid, but fall – FALL! – is glorious because the temperatures are marvelous, the humidity is gone, and we can still run around without a jacket (and in shorts most days). The Go Outside Bug has bitten Nathan, so at long last I’ve decided to “just open the door and let him run free.”

Here’s how that’s gone down:

• He destroyed a tiki torch, and by destroyed I mean beat-it-into-oblivion-and-poured-the-oil-all-over-his-school-clothes.
• On more than one occasion, he has raced outside (without permission) and over to the fence to watch the passersby – in a shirt and nothing else. I don’t know if his junk has been exposed through the pickets, but I can guess.
• He decided he needed some milk and brought the whole almost-full gallon jug outside, then poured it all over the upholstered patio furniture and outdoor rug. (Side note: have tips for cleaning milk out of patio cushions? I’m all ears.)
• He continues to throw the practice softballs (and the bat) over the fence with great regularity.
• He digs in the dirt. A lot. Which is fine by itself, but bringing the soil from the raised bed garden inside? Not fine.

Let me stipulate that these things have all happened when I went inside to use the bathroom, refresh my tea glass, answer the phone, or {fill in the blank other task that takes less than two minutes and keeps Nathan within earshot}.

If you’re reading Mr. Andi, I want you to know: opening the door and letting him run free is not the nirvana you envisioned.

You just finished The Myth of the Fenced Backyard originally posted on Bringing the Sunshine and copyrighted by Andi Sligh. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow me on Facebook and Instagram.

For some time, it has appeared that we have a poltergeist.

Items have gone missing and then mysteriously reappeared months later, the grocery list on the counter one day had inexplicable markings despite the pen and pad appearing to not have moved, an entire gallon of milk was retrieved from the refrigerator and poured out onto the kitchen floor, and one of my Arrested Development DVDs was removed from the player and found almost a year later under the living room rug.

One of the items that went missing many months ago was my reading glasses. Granted, they weren’t expensive, but I liked them and hated that they were gone. I bought new ones which look cute but aren’t as comfortable, and every week or so I lament the fact that they disappeared. I bought them at Stein Mart two years ago, so finding another pair just like them was unlikely.

But let me back up.

On Tuesday when I picked Nathan up from the developmental preschool, his para told me that he had been put in time out that day – for the first time ever. He’s a jovial little guy and as I’ve said before, there are no other children in the class at this time, so he gets plenty of attention and supervision. During outdoor play, he had opened the gate to the playground and bolted across the field. By the time she caught him, he was roughly 100 yards away from the building.

They’ll be locking the gate as a Houdini deterrent in the future.

On Wednesday mornings our routine is for me to load up both kids and both dogs, take Sarah Kate to school, then go down to the bay and walk for about 30 minutes. The dogs walk on a dual-tether leash and Nathan rides in a jogging stroller. After the walk we have just enough time to come back home, unload, get cleaned up, and head back to Nathan’s private preschool.

Yesterday, we were running late (in large part because Nathan got excited when he went pee-pee in the potty that he jumped up too soon and peed all over the rug and floor), so I decided to skip the bay and just come back home after school drop-off and walk the dogs in the neighborhood. I let Nathan walk, rather than ride, which went about as well as you’d expect: he wandered up in various yards and even peeped in one front door window (cringeworthy, I know). My neighbor pulled in and rolled her window down to chat for a moment, which gave him just enough time to wade through a deep mud puddle in his new tennis shoes and school clothes.

Back to the house we went for a bath.

I didn’t have a run scheduled for today so I decided to go ahead and take a shower myself and throw him in with me. He’s all about a bath so I started the water and got him undressed first, expecting him to go ahead and get in (because that’s what he always does – even if the water is still cold). A moment later, as I was about to climb in the shower, I noticed he wasn’t in there. I looked around the bathroom and bedroom and couldn’t find him. I called him and got no reply. I threw the bare minimum in clothing back on and went looking for him – that’s when I spotted the back door standing wide open.

Nathan was buck naked in the backyard.

Have I mentioned that we have a picket fence? And that we live on a corner lot on the main road coming into the subdivision? I won’t be surprised if some new For Sale signs pop up in the very near future.

I corralled him back into the shower, eventually got him to school, and returned home. A short time later, I went to my bedroom to retrieve something and stopped short in the doorway. Lying on the floor, in the wide open space between the door and the bed …

… my missing reading glasses.

You just finished Houdini and the Poltergeist originally posted on Bringing the Sunshine and copyrighted by Andi Sligh. If you enjoyed this post, be sure to follow me on Facebook and Instagram.