Yuck

A new milestone has been reached.
I mentioned previously that he has begun climbing on things. Today he has managed to climb up on one of the padded black boxes we have in our living room. We use them for storage, they look quite nice and keep all the clutter hidden away. Joseph has a small one for his toys, I have one that holds all the power leads and the stuff for our dining table like place mats. The other one lives by the stairs and has one half full of our paperwork and the other full of shoes and shopping bags. It's this one he has started climbing on, perhaps out of curiosity to get behind it. Behind lies the mysterious Under Stairs region, full of rucksacks, a travel cot and my exercise equipment.
Up he went, clinging onto the stair bannister. Once up he could not get down, so I rescued him, but within a few minutes he was up again.
On the third occasion, he went quiet. I was watching something on TV and was not paying him my full attention as by this time I was satisfied he was showing no interest in throwing himself off or about in some dangerous manner.
I glanced over at him, I have to admit I am more suspicious of him when he is quiet than when he is noisy. He too was watching the TV, with rapt attention. The index finger of his left hand was fully extended and was thrust past the first joint into his nostril. As he watched the program, the finger began to gently twist one way and then the other.
Yes, at nearly seventeen months old, my son has learned to pick his nose.
This is, I believe, a later than average age to learn this particular skill. But then, all I've got to go on is the fact that my niece could pick her nose before her first birthday and I only know this because at her first birthday party I got to hold her for a while and she spent most of the time with a digit placed firmly in her nose and she cried when I tried to stop her.
I keep expecting him to look up at me and say something like - "Mummy, my brain itches." which is the only reason I can think of for leaving a finger up there for so long.
Hold up, he's just worked out how to get down off the box safely. Oh wait, he's just climbed back up again. I can only hope that this will be one of those passing interests, he will soon get bored of going up there as there isn't really anything new to see and I can stop worrying that the moment I turn my back he'll do a superman impression and I'll end up spending the whole day in A&E with him whilst some snobby junior doctor tells me off.

At least now I know why the dribble levels have massively increased over the last week, and just when I was starting to make good headway on the patch of nasty dry flaky skin under his chin.
His upper canine teeth have broken through. They're just tiny little points at the moment, but they are there. I noticed when he was sat on my lap and I was blowing raspberries on his tummy, he leant back and laughed and I got a very good view of them.
Got to go now. Someone has just put a Lidl catalogue through the door and Joseph is trying to make paper mache out of it with his own dribble.