Toddlers love key rings, right? Give a baby some keys and she’ll shake them or put them in their mouth or run around the house waving them at the dog. So Dr. Mrs. Dr. F., Jr. gets a hold of mom’s key ring and she does this. The kid is just over one year old.
We are so screwed.
***
The camera had a dead battery so I took it with my phone.
Aimai
Absolutely adorable! Thanks for posting.
WereBear
Watch those car keys.
Tata
It is now time for you to suspend everything from the ceiling. Good luck in your house full of mobiles.
Lee
Similar thing happened with us and ‘child proofing’ the kitchen. We put latches on all the drawers and cabinets. I watched my oldest as a toddler walk around the kitchen opening every cabinet.
We moved all the dangerous items up and the plastic stuff down.
Svensker
You are undoubtedly screwed. Better sign her up for early childhood education. College at 10?
JPL
@WereBear: That was my first thought because she is obviously very observant.
artem1s
what a cuteypie!
needs moar Great Escape overture.
rikyrah
that is so sweet
debbie
At that age, my niece tried to insert keys into an uncovered electrical outlet in my apartment. Her mom kept a set of outlet covers in her bag thereafter.
Gin & Tonic
And it will seem like the day after tomorrow that a boy will be fetching a ladder to help her get back up through her bedroom window when she was out after curfew, because you changed to a sophisticated electronic locking system when she was one.
Joey Maloney
@debbie: At that age, my niece tried to insert keys into an uncovered electrical outlet in my apartment.
I did that. No harm done except I got black all over my fingers and scared the living shit out of my mom.
Baud
@Joey Maloney:
When you were a kid or, like, last week?
Elizabelle
Patience, focus, and a will to experiment. Where could those traits have come from?
BruceFromOhio
Dead bolts up high on doors that go outside. Covers on the AC outlets. We deliberately put the pots and non-breakables in lower cabinets so the kids could pull them out and play kitchen, or drum line, or hide in the cupboard.
As for figuring things out, we tend to treat it as a liability, end up fighting a constant battle where the best possible outcome is a draw. Perhaps she should have her own workbench or lab space – if she’s figuring out keys and locks this quickly, who knows where the upper bound lies?
@Elizabelle: This, too, also. =)
Dupe70
Trial and error. I like how she has already adopted the Scientific Method. Wait until she reprograms your wireless router…
TaMara (BHF)
OMG, that’s adorable. Can’t believe she’s that old already. We need more pix and video.
Deadbolts may not be enough. About 20 years ago (geez, now I feel old thinking this young girl is now an adult), I was in a van full of people when I saw a 2 year old, only in a diaper, walking down a 6-lane highway, trying to cross it. I was out of the van before my then fiance could stop and pull over.
She ran, thank goodness, into the neighborhood, not the highway. I caught up with her and turned her over to the police. Later when I called to check up on her situation, found out she was down for a nap, her mom decided to take a nap as well.
Little girl got up, climbed out of her crib, moved a coffee table over to the door, unlocked the deadbolt and went on her adventure. The most horrifying part for me? She lived on the OTHER SIDE of that six lane highway. She had crossed it when I found her.
I hung the phone up and shook for a full five minutes and for months after that would get teary-eyed whenever I thought about the whole thing.
geg6
Oh man, Tim. You really are totally screwed. She’s too smart and tenacious for her age. That will only get worse.
LOL! But it’s the cutest thing ever!
Paul W.
Wow! Smart kid, and so patient. I feel like I’m not even that patient with my much smaller key ring when I get home at the end of the day.
ruemara
You may want to keep a lock on any special experiments you keep at your home lab. I’ve read Fantastic Four, I know how it turns out.
Violet
Totally adorable. Can’t imagine where she gets her scientific method instincts and her curiosity. Real puzzler.
@TaMara (BHF): Wow, what a story. Did you keep in touch? Do you know what the young woman is doing today? She sounds like she’s got real initiative!
TaMara (BHF)
@ruemara: That made me spit coffee.
@Violet: I didn’t, sadly. The police never even told me her name. I just remember feeling so bad for her mom. I was an escape artist as a small child and when I got older, I was a sleep walker and my mom caught me more than once trying to go out the front door, sound asleep.
Iowa Old Lady
@TaMara (BHF): Holy crow. That’s scary. Tim should take heed.
kindness
It is good that her feet can’t reach the pedals of your car.
I guess that will be your worry when she turns 4.
burnspbesq
The old cliche goes “you spend two years waiting for them to walk and talk, and then you spend 20 years waiting for them to sit down and shut up.” Clearly, you’re on the fast track.
tsquared2001
@TaMara (BHF): Once, three year old Nephew decided he was tired of all this daycare bullshit and he was going home to watch cartoons. Unfortunately, home was nearly 15 blocks away.
The little pisher almost made it – after frantic phone calls from his Mom and the daycare, the cops found him two blocks from home.
I am quite torn over the fact that he now uses the GPS on his phone for nearly every trip.
Amir Khalid
A few months ago, I saw a BBC story about a guy who put his cat and dog in the kitchen every morning before going to work, and couldn’t work out why he’d come home every day to find them elsewhere in the house. Finally, he put a video camera on the kitchen door. Which revealed that …
As soon as the human was out of the house, the cat would climb up on the cat tree right next to the kitchen door, reach for the handle, and open the door for the dog.
OzarkHillbilly
Just think… soon you will be walking her down the aisle… for her first hearing in a criminal court.
Mike E
Similarly, both my keys and driver’s license went missing in the provenance of a certain little girl…never saw the ID again (didn’t go fishing for it down the air duct where it certainly went) but about two weeks later, while we were arranging blocks on the carpet, Miss E produced the keys with ringing fanfare out of thin air. Children are a wonder!
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Ain’t no prison can hold her.
Tenar Darell
Wow. Seriously adorable. What’s the present day electronic equivalent of the telephone? I’m thinking that tower cases aren’t safe around curious children, are they? Better make sure to have computer backups when she figures out how to use the screwdrivers and hex keys. What a great, inventive, curious child.
I was going to share this video on the baby rhino escape in an open thread, but maybe it fits better here?
scav
Oooh, the attention to small precise detail she has and utter confidence in observations and inferences, lucky you! My detail added to the heap is that you might be slightly surprised by the type of key needed (generic) sometimes needed to start a backhoe. Luckily, toddler was of a size to absolutely require dad to attain seat of the utterly entrancing big yellow toy that delivered itself to next door so Really Big Noise was the extent of adventure.
Eric U.
the new tamper-proof outlets are very effective. Can’t stick anything into just one side, has to be both sides at once.
WaterGirl
So adorable!
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, does it?
gogol's wife
So cute! And it generated a great thread.
Roger Moore
@debbie:
That’s why the electrical code now calls for all outlets close to ground level to be tamper resistant. Tamper resistant outlets are a lot harder to defeat than those outlet covers are.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I’m shocked, I tell you shocked that Dr. Mrs. Dr, F. Jr. is inquisitive and clever. You are indeed so screwed. Fortunately for her, she’s terribly cute. Thanks for the tape. We’ll need more regularly provided pictures of her – and of course Max.
gvg
prius and other “modern” proximity keys unlock the car when you get near, sometimes quietly. this means that the kids who are curious can open the car door you thought were locked and say let out the brake or if you are still nearby (a few feet away but in the house) they can turn on the car. there is no way we have found to make sure the car will not helpfully unlock itself. I can’t believe there hasn’t been an accident in the news yet on that “feature” which is not optional. Something we did not think of when we began fostering children and already had the Prius. We try to watch very closely. Our adopted child is mostly not that curious get into trouble prone, but one of our fosters certainly was. I had new drawer latches, door handle covers and more electrical covers on within the first week, other wise I couldn’t sit down and had to follow him around everywhere.
There are front door latch guards that can be opened from either side but you have to be able to reach to the top of the door. useful until chair moving and a certain size are reached. I also recommend the electrical outlet covers that still allow plugins if you rotate them because the others that just push in are the dickens to get back out when you want to vacum. We didn’t do the pans ok to bang cabinet because sis is prone to migraines and frankly I am not able to stand that much banging noise myself. Different kids have different stubborness levels too. One toddler foster was merry and outgoing but incredibly stubborn and smart. Athletically talented too. Really good aim with a ball at 2 and persistant at mastering bike riding on older kids bike.
I have heard about kids leaving the house. Fortunately we have a fence that covers front and back yards with automatic gate for cars. This was because of an escape artist dog that would bolt through the front but was beneficial for kid safety. The love riding bikes and things on driveway and I can relax because they can’t get to the street though I am always outside with them.
Safety gadgets just buy time. What you have to do is take the time to train the kids not to do the dangerous things before they figure out how to circumvent them. Telling them know when they fumble with doors they aren’t supposed to go out is nessesary multiple times. When they are older tell them why not. I don’t think you should make a habit of just watching and laughing. She knows you are paying attention happily and will do it again to get your attention.
Every small kid though did try to steal keys and cell phones. We HAD to give them each their own small sets of both. baby cell phones talk and make realistic sounds. Otherwise they actually pick pockets and purses. We pay so much attention too ours that the babies are fascinated.
Frankensteinbeck
Serious parenting advice:
No matter what society has trained you to think, your child is as smart as you. In some ways, smarter. Babies are not larvae or alien creatures, they’re humans and they’re in a stage where problem solving is their entire life. They are ignorant, not knowing the tricks and context that you take for granted, but they are as intelligent as you are from day one. It’s easy to forget that because you’ve forgotten just how incredibly hard it is to learn motor skills and the basics of language.
Assume you are raising a fully intelligent human being who views the world as a vast puzzle box, and you’ll have less horrible surprises. If you can figure out how you would watch Daddy put the medicine in the top kitchen shelf, wait until he’s not watching, push over a chair, climb up onto the counter, get a ladle out of a drawer and use it to scoop the medicine out, she can.
YellowJournalism
When he was one, oldest snuck the keys out of my pocket as I buckled him in the car seat. I shut his door as he pressed the lock button. I was a mess until help could arrive.
Good luck with that!
Violet
@tsquared2001: A friend’s dad did this. Tired of all that senior rehab facility bullshit. Decided he wanted to go home. Wheeled himself two miles home. No one stopped or asked after the elderly gentleman in the wheelchair in the July heat as he wheeled himself along a busy road for two miles. He got home and couldn’t get in the house because he didn’t have keys. Fortunately a neighbor saw him, called one of the kids, who had to drive up there and retrieve dad from the neighbor.
Villago Delenda Est
Now, if you’re not already scared out of your wits, imagine cats with opposable thumbs.
the Conster
Also, looks like you’ve got a southpaw. Teach her to pitch, and you and the Dr. Mrs. Dr. and the kid will be set for life. I say the kid because by the time she’s recruiting age women will be playing in the majors, at least as pitchers.
divF
@debbie: I’ve had a sideline of babysitting infants and toddlers for the last 35 years or so. I’ve learned (1) to see early when a little staggerer is heading for something dangerous (e.g. electrical outlets, cords, lamps) and (2) that a shouted “No!” will freeze them just long enough to get across the room and deter them. It’s become so reflexive that I’ve occasionally done this at parties to children I’m not specifically responsible for. Typically parents are grateful, the other guests puzzled.
ETA: extremely cute video. just what I needed after a bad night’s sleep and a briefing to senior management in 20 min.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Villago Delenda Est: Cravendale Milk
Villago Delenda Est
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: The best part is the cat thumbing through a book on military strategy.
Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.
ranchandsyrup
Happy bday to our youngest. turns one today!
HumboldtBlue
I lost a $100 dollar bet with my then one-and-a-half-maybe-two-year-old neighbor when he and his dad were at the laundry room door. I told dad I would give the kid a hundred bucks if he got the door open and in a split second the little fucker had to door open and his hand out.
Later I found out that the laundry room key had some slight discoloration and that allowed the kid to discern from the 300 other keys on the ring. I got back at the little fucker later, however, and kept the fire truck I bought him for a birthday for myself.
Epicurus
Did she finally get the right key? Echoing many of the other posters here, be afraid, be very afraid! This one is going to run your life for a while, better get used to it. Thanks for the laughs, needed one this morningl.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: He’s sort of stupid if he didn’t realize a cat can pull down the lever door handles (as opposed to the round ones).
Tehanu
Adorable. Gosh, I miss having a little one around, although with two grandchildren I’m way too pooped to keep up any more. Congratulations on having such a bright, observant child.
Nellie in NZ
Yep, our son did this at the front door when he was just over one. When he was nearly two, I caught him getting into the car with the appropriate key to start the engine, all well selected. In order to sleep, we had to lock him in his room at night for a bit. That made me uncomfortable, but I was exhausted. I would walk into the kitchen to find him on top of the fridge or in the bottom cabinet behind the pots and pans. Cheerful as all get out, though.
Tata
My daughter’s family moved into a childproof rental, complete with top locks and safety windows. The next morning, she awoke to a toddler presenting her with a handful of dandelions.
LAC
Her patience is adorable and very scary. She obviously tracks you guys.
SWMBO
This is the first thing I thought of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di_7S7QSHZg&feature=youtu.be&t=8m50s