Friday evening, as I was preparing dinner, a small creature quietly climbed up into my chair and dumped the remainder of my tea (probably about a third of a cup) onto my laptop’s keyboard.

This small creature I speak of is my sixteen-month-old daughter Kyrie, whom we sometimes refer to as “Smiley Kyrie,” as she is full of baby smiles, but now I think the nickname “Wiley Kyrie” might be just as appropriate because she has shown us she is very clever.

Kyrie learned to walk at nine months old. My older two were early walkers, both learning to walk shortly before their respective first birthdays, but Kyrie was the earliest walker of them all. Nine months. We were not ready. We were even less ready when, shortly after, she learned that she could use the holes in the baby gate as stepping stones by shoving her feet into them. Luckily, at that time, she did not have the strength to propel herself over the baby gate, but she learned that if she crawled onto the nearby chair, she could get over the baby gate that way.

We pushed the baby gate away from the chair, and that worked for a while, but then the dreaded day came where she learned how to scale the baby gate high enough that she could get one leg and then the other over the top of it, and after that, keeping her in was impossible. Last week, I admitted defeat, and just took the baby gate down to prevent any more needless falling. As you can imagine, my life is full of a lot of chasing the small one back into the living room I wish she had never found her way out of, trying to keep dog food out of her hands and mouth, and begging my other two kids to, for the love of all that is holy, keep the doors of their rooms and shared bathroom closed.

The laptop, by the way, may never be the same. It is still (after three days) wet on the inside and I am now using my husband’s laptop (same model) in which he was able to switch the hard drive from my own computer. The baby climbs up onto my chair, standing behind me, but I figure as long as she is right here, trying to share a chair with me, I know where she is and don’t have to get up every couple of minutes to check on her.

The silver lining is I don’t think I will ever have to worry about her problem-solving skills. My oldest gives up if he doesn’t get something right away. My middle child screams. But my youngest just figures out how she can do it herself. I hope that’s a trait that will continue on with her into adulthood. The world is hers to discover and I never want her to miss an opportunity because she gave up.