WHOA.

Almost overnight, he's turned into a little boy.

He's busy all the time. He's into everything. He specialises in emptying drawers, throwing toys and shoes into bathtubs, obsessing over things with wheels, and climbing into baskets of laundry to stir the clothes with kitchen utensils. Don't ask, I don't know. But it seems to be very important work.

He's running everywhere – arms tucked behind him for more aerodynamic performance, and head tilted forward so his feet have something to catch up to. He comes a cropper sometimes (you should see the grazed lump on his forehead from yesterday) but on the whole he just careens crazily from potential disaster to potential disaster, saying "whoa!" at every near miss. An average minute is "whoa ... whoa ... WHOA ... whoa, whoa ... whoa."

He climbs everything – getting up on top of (unstable) boxes, the coffee table, the TiVo, Berry's toy shopping trolley, and once – heart-stoppingly – he clambered up the stairs, after the safety gate popped back open after being closed too hard. When I heard the music of his Imaginarium activity block floating down from upstairs, my heart froze. That's never happened again.

Most times, he helpfully scolds "ahh-ahh!" as he climbs on to a forbidden chair or overturned Tonka truck – just in case I fail to notice independently that he's doing something naughty.

I never dreamed that they would be so completely different – that she would be so careful and orderly and particular, and that he would be so bent on destruction-though-investigation, and so skilled at giving his mother mini-heart-attacks. Chalk and cheese, sure – but he adores his sister and she adores him back.

Yeah... I really need to keep my camera on a sports setting or something...

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