My Nephew Mason

I have three nephews, the oldest is almost 7, the middle one is 5, and the youngest is 4-ish, but let’s talk about the middle one for a minute. By the time the kid was 3 years old, he already had a rap sheet that included arson, theft, and breaking and entering. You see, Mason likes to wake up in the middle of the night and have free rein of the house, which is when he likes to play with his toys or raid the fridge for cold cuts, chocolate milk, and Kraft singles. Because he kept doing this, my sister was forced to put a baby-gate on his door so he couldn’t get out. However, the first gate she bought didn’t work as intended and he quickly figured out how to open it. So, my sister then had to buy the best baby-gate on the market (she got it at Babies R Us and the salesman swore it was the tallest gate she would find), which worked….for a couple of nights. Mason figured out that he could pull a chair over and just hop over the gate, which led to all the chairs in his room being removed and any other movable furniture being tied to the bed. Next, Mason pulled all the drawers out of his dresser, stacked them on top of each other, and once again climbed over the gate. This made my sister find a way to lock the drawers at night, which only made Mason find another way out, which he did by stacking all the books in his room and again, he climbed over the gate. My sister then removed those, too, which meant there was nothing left in his room to help him get out. So, Mason did the only reasonable thing left for him to do, which was give up. Ha! No, he figured out how to just climb the bars of the baby-gate and once again, he was running free in the house. My sister came up with a great idea to counteract his climbing out by putting Crisco all over the bars of the gate, so that Mason could no longer climb the bars. Mason counteracted her counteract by using a toy screwdriver to undo the bottom screws of the gate, so that he could push it out far enough to escape underneath the gate. My sister then put Crisco on the screws so he could no longer undo them. So, with no way to escape, Mason was quiet for a few nights, that was until he started using his blanket to wipe the Crisco off the bars of the baby-gate and again, he was free. Because my sister couldn’t stop him with one baby-gate, she was forced to do this:

"So what if it’s a fire hazard, it worked.”

Oh, did I forget to mention that Mason did all of this before he was even two years old? Yeah, he wasn’t even two yet. Recently, my sister and her family moved into a new house and she gave up on keeping him in his room, but she did figure out a way to keep Mason from raiding the kitchen. She put a dead-bolt on the pantry and uses a bike-lock on the fridge so he can no longer devour everything he can find to eat at night. And because Mason is not afraid of the dark and will wander outside to play in the sandbox at four in the morning, she has to make sure she sets the alarm every night to let her know if he opens any doors (or windows, he’s crazy smart) leading outside. I’m telling you, this kid is awesome and I haven’t even gotten to the night he almost burned down the house, maybe next week.