Baby Bear Ransacks My Office

Honestly, I thought all that noise was coming from his own room. At least once a day he rearranges his bedroom furniture, empties his toy box (one of those heavy duty plastic storage bins), then lies on his back on the bed, lifts his legs, and sets about balancing the box on his feet, spinning it until he finally sends it flying across the room to hit the wall or door with a horrific banging noise.

That’s what I thought he was doing, until I went into his room to find he wasn’t there. His toys were in the toy box, and his furniture did not appear to have been rearranged since the last time I dared to venture into his booby-trapped domain armed with whip, fedora, and Grail diary.

But there was a lot of thumping coming from across the hall, behind the closed door of my office.

I found him sitting in my desk chair, surrounded by wreckage. He’d knocked over framed photos; pushed my laptop and a flat screen monitor into the dead space beyond where my desk curves; tipped over five stacked letter trays, the contents spread all over the floor; dumped the pencil and paper clip receptacles; and relocated the printer from the desk to the top of the two-drawer file cabinet where the letter trays had been.

I suppose I should be thankful he didn’t pull the books off the bookcases—or maybe he would have had I not discovered him when I did.

At least my laptop still works. I keep it closed when not in use, and that may well have saved it.

But it’s for this very reason that I usually keep my office door locked when I’m not in there. Usually. Why the lapse this time? Well, lately Baby Bear has developed a knack for locking doors before closing them. Even if I leave my office for just a minute, he’ll swoop in to push the button on the door knob, then close the door before returning to his own room. So why didn’t he do it this time? Why, instead of locking my door and going back to his own affairs, did he make himself comfortable within? (And trust me—ransacking a room IS his way of making himself comfortable!)

Perhaps the recent door locking has been all one big diversionary ploy, designed to trick me into keeping my office door unlocked for more prolonged periods, lulling me into thinking I don’t have to lock it, because he’ll do it and that’s it.

Or perhaps—in fact, most likely—I’m just losing my mind.