About a month ago, Axel started getting really curious about Brillo's doggie door, which provides a portal from the dining room onto the back porch. He liked pushing the flap open, and he would often hang out in front of it and get clobbered by Brillo as the dog blindly came in from the outside. That didn't really phase the boy, though, and his curiosity intensified. Right before my mom arrived for her visit, I began to suspect the inevitable was fast approaching. Sure enough, the day after my mom left, Axel took one giant leap for babykind and suddenly found himself in a whole new world, on the porch. I had noticed him playing by the door while I was picking up around the house, and I knew he couldn't be trusted. I needed to go into the other room to work and knew better than to leave him there, so I dashed into his room to set down the laundry I had in my hands and turned to go grab him. To my (semi) surprise, he had vanished.

"Axel?" cried the mommy. No reply. I peaked through the sliding glass door, and there he was, his squirmy little body already halfway down the top step--the top step of a whole series of very steep, very scary, razor-sharp, metal-edged killer steps. "Danger Boy," as I have taken to calling him, had no fear and intended to go out into the yard to play under the pepper tree. I grabbed him, brought him inside, grabbed the camera, set him down, and managed to capture the little cat burglar ninja baby in action...

I used the door blocker for about one day, and that really pissed Brillo off, and then I gave up and just relied on vigilance to keep him out of harm's way...vigilance and scolding. I started waggling my finger at him "Babu Bat" style (Seinfeld reference, ya'll) while telling him, "No, no." He quickly got the point, and he cries every time I foil his efforts with a stern, "No, no," but he no longer goes out Brillo's door. Instead, he now, as of this morning, uses the sliding screen door, like Mommy.

Yep, I was putting dishes away, and I poked my head out of the kitchen to see what he was up to, and he was outside. The screen door was cracked open about a baby-width, and there he was, playing in Brillo's water bowl, which, by the way, was recently relocated to there from the kitchen because he who will remain unnamed kept spilling it all over the kitchen floor. Incidentally, since I have also been forced to secure all of our toilet bowls, the back porch is the ONLY place Brillo can go for a drink of water. It's really too bad the lock is broken on the screen door, because now my little Houdini has double access to the wonderful world of the backyard. I guess Danger Boy is gonna continue to keep Mommy on her toes! Witness:

Snail trail.