The Tokoloshe!

Stephen is definitely the Tokoloshe (an African mythological creature who is dwarf-like and is always up to mischief). He gets up to mischief all the time and really keeps me on my toes. He doesn't mean to get up to mischief. I think he just likes to do the things that he sees me do. Here are some things he has done within the last few months:

• He unpacks my kitchen cupboards regularly.
• He puts toys or pens and pencils or kitchen gloves in the oven (pretending to bake) so that when I preheat the oven, there is a rubber burning smell or melted plastic or burnt fabric in the oven. (I have started checking the oven thoroughly before turning it on.
• He tries to microwave anything and everything, including plastics things and metal things which should not be microwaved.
• He has repeatedly poured out all my olive and canola oil all over the stove and into various pots and pans.
• He then adds cereal and/or baking sprinkles and/or herbs and spices to the oil.
• He has shoved paper napkins into the toaster, pushing them in there with a metal utensil, while simultaneously turning it on.
• He often turns the oven on.
• He regularly moves all the boxes of cereal we have into the center of the kitchen.
• He plays with any knives he can get his hands on.
• He has repeatedly put Rob's and my toothbrush into a tub of Vaseline (we've gone through several toothbrushes recently because of it).

Many of these things are just outright dangerous and so we try not to leave him alone because he can seriously hurt himself or burn the house down. It makes it difficult if you have to use the bathroom. Luckily Luke has become really good at keeping an eye on Stephen when I can't and will come running if he sees Stephen doing something he shouldn't. We thought that a play kitchen would help and so we borrowed one from our neighbors, the Nelsons, but he lost interest within a few days and went back to what he was doing before.

Today he tried to microwave dice (see below) and he rubbed bacon grease, left in a pan into his hair. He also tried to bake one of our nativity sets, where he had laid all the pieces out on several cookie sheets. Luke came running to inform me of the latter and I was able to save it. The pieces of the set were very hot though.

I caught him about to microwave a Ziplock bag of dice.