Shenanigans

Just in case you were worried, dear readers, that my children had suddenly developed manners, obedience, or any kind of civility, here is a post dedicated to putting your fears to rest.  A few weeks ago we had a wonderful visit from my brother, sister and nephew (aside from Cbear's ER trip, but that was purely accidental...fell at the playground and busted her lip).  I need to do a post about it but haven't gotten the chance yet.  But since our family's gone back home the girls have been up to their old tricks as much as (more than?) ever, and making sure I'm earning every one of those pesky gray hairs that keep appearing on my head.

A few days ago I was working in the kitchen and the girls were upstairs playing nicely...ha, scratch that...the girls were upstairs leaving me alone so I was leaving them alone (that's more honest!) and then I happened to hear water running and giggling.  So I went upstairs and of course, when they heard me coming they ran away and hid. I found most of the bathroom soaked and an orange teapot sitting on the counter, and when I finally got the story out of Cbear she said that "we were making pee-pee in the teapot and making it go in the toilet." These are the games they come up with when left to their own devices. However, now I'm considering putting Cbear in charge of potty training Jellybean (after she declared yesterday that "I'm the queen of bossing Jellybean!").  It's my best/worst idea ever.

As soon as I got back downstairs from the tea-pee-pee-pot incident, I heard shrieking and "Jellybean crashed the blinds!" I went back up and found the aftermath of a popular (meaning banned) game at our house, which is to climb on the radiator, hold the blind cord and swing down to the floor, like Tarzan or something. After a come-to-Jesus meeting with them about it, they waited approximately 1.5 days to ignore my warnings, and so yesterday morning was spent debating to take Jellybean to the hospital or not...she got the cord wrapped around her finger when jumping and it left a nasty cut. A friend of mine who is a doctor got a crazy text from me along the lines of, "if she can bend her finger it's not broken, right?" Jellybean's finger seems to be doing just fine, and I'm hoping natural consequences did the job better than me concerning their little game.

A few minutes after the blind-crashing, I heard more giggling and threw in the towel on whatever I was trying to do (dishes, I think...it's always dishes), went back upstairs to find the girls had discovered the hiding spot of their confiscated water guns and were spraying each other and the walls in the guest room. I.was.done.  At some point in my conversation Cbear stopped me and was all, "Mama, what is a 'reckoning'?" I think I made them go outside until it was time to eat lunch.

Another day this week, it was warm and sunny and I opened a few windows for some fresh air. Now, screens are not a thing here, as in, nobody has screens on their windows.  Not a big deal, right? (Aside from the blinding fear that someone is going to fall/jump out of a window at some point...yeah, a lot of the ones on the upper floors are locked at all times.) So my (second floor) bedroom window was only open while Jellybean was sleeping, and then I closed it.  Fast forward a few hours, Clint got home from work, and since I saw him pull in the driveway I opened the front door like a good wife (internal monologue: "You're it...I'm tapping out, buddy!"). Imagine my surprise when I see him bending down on the sidewalk and picking up a few things, saying, "why are your underwear out here?" That's right, friends.  While I was putting Jellybean down for a nap, Cbear had thrown two bras, a wash cloth, a head band, and an empty toilet roll out my bedroom window for the whole neighborhood to see.  They had been out there for hours, and our neighbors live CLOSE. It was so classy.  But I must have been brain-fried by that point because I laughed hysterically and directly quoted Ron Burgundy: "I'm not even mad...that's amazing!"

And the icing on the cake: So, we have this little craft room in our house with the girls' art supplies, a little table, and an easel.  They KNOW what a suitable surface is for coloring and what is not, but, in the spirit of good parenting, Clint and I were letting them play in the craft room while we solved the world's problems...er...I mean, watched a hilarious YouTube video (bad lip reading...best thing ever.). But we figured it would be fine because it was six minutes of our life. SIX MINUTES. That is it. And then we closed the laptop and I happened to walk by the craft room and the door was shut.  My girls are not very sneaky. They always shut the door when they are being naughty. So I opened it and caught them red-handed coloring on the wall with marker and pens. The company is so not getting the deposit back on our house. The best thing about it, though, was that Cbear has really been into drawing circles lately, and she often draw a circle within a circle with the small circle colored in, if that makes sense. It's supposed to be something but I don't remember what she intends it to be, because to me it just looks like boobs. So now our craft room has four large, green and black breasts drawn on the wall. Hey, I guess it's "art."

Feel better about your children/parenting now? That's my goal in life, y'all. YOU'RE WELCOME.