Who wants to play a game?

Por.ter.James [poor-ter-james]: adjective
1. eager to learn or know; inquisitive.
2. prying; meddlesome.


This is my third child by definition. He is adorable, happy, curious, and always, ALWAYS going non stop. He makes me laugh and at times he makes me crazy. Today was one of the crazy times.

Let me start at the beginning. EK works from home, so he came into the kitchen for some lunch and was near the toaster when he noticed something red sitting just inside the toaster. He asked me why there were Hot Tamale candies in the toaster. I went to the toaster to examine it only to find that they were not Hot Tamales at all.

The other day Porter pushed a kitchen chair over to the counter where he found a bottle of vitamins that he managed to open, chew on, and spit out (thankfully). I was in the other room and didn't know any of this was happening until I heard the blender motor come on. I jumped up and ran into the kitchen to find Porter standing on a chair at the counter, crying, with pills all around him. I picked him up, checked him out to make sure he wasn't hurt or overdosing, hugged him, and told him it was okay. I then began to clean up the bright red gel cap vitamins that were all over the counter and floor. I figured that was the end of that adventure.

Well, that brings us back to today. So, I remember the vitamin incident and explain it to EK who smiles, removes his lunch from the microwave, and heads back out to work. I then decide to begin removing the vitamins, that have now made me very hungry for some real Hot Tamales candy, and see something else at the bottom of the toaster. It looked like a tiny piece of melted plastic, so I unplugged the toaster and got a knife to see if I could remove this mystery object. Once I got it freed from the bottom and was able to wiggle it loose, I notice there was another very similarly shaped piece of plastic in there, but that one was not so lucky. It was permanently adhered to the inside wall of the toaster. It didn't matter how sharp a knife or how much force I used, it was just not coming out of there. I gave up on that piece and decided to at least get the other loose piece out of the bottom in order to see what it was that met its early demise. I turned the toaster upside down and shook it until the piece fell out onto the counter. It was at that moment that I realized that Porter had not only opened the vitamins and placed them in the toaster, he also found my two SD 2GB video cards for my new camera and had lovingly placed them in the toaster as well. He then promptly figured out how to push down the neat little lever on the toaster in order to cook all the ingredients into a completely ruined mess. I am now not only without my two new SD cards and all the family photos and videos that were on them, but my toaster is now ruined as well. On the bright side however, only 3 of the twenty or so vitamins melted in the bottom of the toaster, so I was able to salvage some more of those. So, the moral of the story is; make sure to always put a leash on your Porter so he can get only 3 feet away at all times, or he will get into something, eat something, climb on something, or break something and it may take you days to figure it all out. Mystery solved.