Oh, You Wanted Something Permanent? October 26, 2009

I got some comments with my last post that cereal (two FULL bags of cereal that I BOUGHT!) wasn’t really that big of a deal, it wasn’t permanent after all, it could just be vacuumed up (and by “just” here we mean with at least three separate vacuumings.)

And so, for your viewing pleasure, I give you the Sharpie artwork: (All artwork was produced by the Baby.)

Yes, that’s Sharpie on the carpet too. And on the carpet there.

And that’s just the walls (and carpet) there’s also this: this:

and this: And these: And my personal favorite, the hearth:

I just don’t bother to get mad about the Sharpie anymore.

No, I don’t just have markers lying around the house all the time, 90% of the time I can not figure out where he got the marker that he’s using, but if there’s one in the building he’ll find it (last week he found 2 (TWO!) within the first five minutes of being in church.)

P.S. All walls with Sharpie on them were painted within the last year.

While I Was Upstairs Cleaning the Playroom… October 22, 2009

… the Irish Twins were taking care of the living room:

(The fact that the Infantile Delinquent isn’t pictured does not mean he wasn’t involved (it means he was upstairs changing his underwear.))

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

Sometimes people joke with me about having more kids.

I don’t really think it’s funny.

The Real Houdini January 25, 2009

Back when the Infantile Delinquent was stealing cars my mother said that rather than calling him Irish 1, which was what I called him at the time, I should call him Houdini.  I thought about it but then I came up with Infantile Delinquent and I thought that was pretty clever (and then bythelbs came up with InfaDel and that was even cleverer and a lot of fun) so I went with Infantile Delinquent instead.

And now I know I made a good choice.  Sure the Infadel steals cars but only those that are left unlocked.  Or those to which he has access to the keys, which is pretty precocious for a two-year-old but not quite as impressive as his sister who opens this from the other side of the door.  (That’s not a stain on the door jamb, it’s just unpainted wood from where the hinges used to be before I turned the door around.  Long story.)

Sean and I sleep in the basement in our house.  All the kids sleep upstairs.  Most of the time.  But the kids are horrible sleepers and all of them with the exception of the Pea would prefer to sleep in our bed.  The Princess and the InfaDel feel so strongly about this that they will sneak down stairs in the middle of the night to do so.  The Baby probably would too but he can’t get out of his crib.  Yet.  (He’s only barely one after all) So he doesn’t.

In an effort to not have four people in our bed every night  we started locking the basement door.  That was effective for all of maybe one night.  Then the Princess realized that by inserting a screwdriver along the striker plate (the plate that lets the door close without your having to turn the knob.  Yes, I had to look that up.) she could pop that sucker right open.

So after waking up to find the Princess in our bed 2 or 3 (or 20 or 30) times we installed the very fancy hook and eye latch.

Before we proceed let me point out a few features of the hook and eye.

It’s placed high on the door.  I’m 5′7″ and I took this picture standing, notice how you’re looking up at the latch?

There’s a backstop (looked that one up too) between the edge of the door and the latch so anything that’s going to open that latch has to turn a corner.  (You can’t really see it in this picture but in the interest of full disclosure I will tell you that the backstop on this particular door is backwards because when I turned the door around I was too lazy to pull off the backstop and turn it around too.)

This particular latch has a spring loaded lock on it.  You drop the latch into place and then pull the lock thingy back and  it’s supposed to secure the latch into place. (This feature is not very effective, it’s easy to unlatch the thing without pulling back the lock.  But it has to add some resistance right?)

The latch stopped the Princess for all of two nights.

SHE WAS STILL GETTING IN!!!!

At first we thought that we were forgetting to latch it.  Nope.

Maybe she was just jimmying the door and the latch was coming off?  No.

I wondered if she was somehow getting a screwdriver in there so I tried it.  That didn’t work either.

So finally we asked her.

She carries a chair down the stairs and stands on it.  Then she takes a paperback book and slides the cover between the door and the frame.  The cover of the book easily turns the corner (Made slightly easier by the backward backstop but still…) and with the book cover lifts the latch.  She then inserts a screwdriver between the door and the striker plate, because we often engage both the latch and the lock (why, I have no idea because obviously neither are doing any good)  and unlocks the door.  She then carries the chair back upstairs, puts the book and the screwdriver away (the only time she ever cleans up after herself) and them comes back downstairs and climbs into bed with us.

It really is too bad she’s an evil genius.

Why I’m Glad it Wasn’t Very Hot Today. September 27, 2008

Irish1 loves cars.  I don’t let him play in my car but that requires some work on my part.  The car must always be locked.  (I’m not a locker by nature, my parents not only don’t lock, they leave the keys in the cars.  And I was raised with that so the locking thing took some getting used to.)  But it doesn’t end at locking.  Irish1, my 2 year old, can unlock my car.  He’s perfectly comfortable unlocking either with the key fob thing or the key itself.  And he makes sure to lock the door behind him.  (I may not be a locker by nature but he is.)  He likes to turn on the lights and the blinkers and generally do things that make turning on the car very interesting for me the next time I get in it.  He also likes to put the key in the ignition and turn on the radio.  And because that’s not interesting enough anymore he starts the car.

Let me tell you how fun it is to stand outside a car that you can’t get into because it’s locked with the key inside and try to talk your two-year-old into turning off the car and letting you in.  Really, really not fun.  (Here’s a hint, if you show any sign of how mad you are he won’t unlock the door.)  So we keep the keys on top of the fridge where he can’t get them.  Yet.

It’s not just my car that he likes.  He’s an equal opportunity car lover.  He climbs into my mother’s car when we go there, He’ll climb right into any car he can find.  He doesn’t talk a whole lot but he can and will identify the “owner” of any car that he recognizes.  He knows which car is Laura’s and which is Grandma’s.  He yells out “Ne har” (Sydney car) every time our neighbor drives by.  (As an aside, I’ll tell you that he calls our van “mine har” that’s mine car.   In his mind it’s not my car, it’s his.)

Irish1 also climbs the fence of our fully fenced yard.  He’s been brought back by the neighbors on more than one occasion.

Given the above, why was I at all surprised when the Princess and the Pea came running in today crying because Irish1 had locked himself into a car that was left parked (but apparently not locked) on the street?  (They were crying because they were afraid he was going to suffocate in the car.  There wasn’t much danger of that.)  Whose car it was, I have no idea, but I feel safe saying that Irish1 has now taken things to a whole other level.  (Or possibly a Ho Nuva Level.)

And I thought raising the Pea was going to be bad.

Today August 18, 2008

Today one of my children stole my car keys.  This child left the house and went out to the car and unlocked it.  This child put the key in the ignition and turned it.  This child stared the engine of my car as it sat on the street of a fairly steep hill in front of my cousin’s house.  This child is two.

That’s right, Irish 1 (whose birthday is May 2nd- he’s not even two and a half!) started my car and turned on the wipers and changed the radio station and turned on the lights and …

He also climbs the fence to get out of our yard.  And then he runs down the street, maybe he’s headed for Costco.  There’s no way it’s fair that I get both him and the Pea.  Have I mentioned that Irish2 started pulling up at 7 months?

I’m skipping right over the “stop them from talking back” crap, if I can keep even two of them alive for the next 17 or so years I’ll consider it a job well done.

———————————————————

In other news, there’s no icecream to go with my brownies tonight.  There really is no justice in the world.