I complain a lot about the kids getting into stuff, and it is a true pain in the ass (I mean, really, life would be easier if she would just listen to me when I say things - although I do recognize the absolute futility of that hope and dream) BUT I do realize that what she's getting into now has absolutely no comparison to what she used to get into. At one point, we had the fridge locked up tighter than a whore in .... Anyway, very tight. You know why we did this? Because milk is a bitch to get out of carpet. And she would dump every gallon of milk we had on the den floor. Then play chemistry teacher and combine.
Some of her most memorable combos were:
1) eggs. And why do my kids always go for the eggs? I have no real reason. And I suspect, they don't know either.
2) coffee. Yes fresh Folger's, straight from the container with the air-tight lid. And if you think I over-reacted to the eggs and milk, try dumping my entire stash of coffee on the chaise lounger, dumping milk on it, then falling asleep in it and peeing. There you go princess, and some day when you have kids, I hope they act JUST LiKE YOU!!!!(Mother's curse in 3, 2, 1...) And to you mothers out there, there is no way to get pee-and-milk soaked coffee out of furniture, no matter what your Grandma tells you. That chaise lounger that I had painstakingly re-covered went in the trash. And me without coffee is such a terrible, life-altering concept, I can't even go there!
3) juice. Evidently she wasn't aware that milk and juice make a bad combo. Like hard liquer and beer. She'll learn.
4) yogurt. Little bit, were you aware that yogurt and milk both go sour, especially if you don't clean them up right away? And if you do this in the middle of the night, there's no way I can clean it up right away.
5) potting soil. Side note, this ended my one and only streak of actually keeping a plant alive long enough to break the soil. Pauvre, pauvre tomato plant! And I was growing those for your brother! I wouldn't have made you eat any! I swear!
6) jelly. Grape jelly. Need I say more?
7) cheese slices. And no, she never threw the wrappers away, even though the trash can was very close to the fridge.
Her dad made this his personal quest to keep her from the fridge. He attached a velco-closing strap to the door and side thinking that would solve the problem. Did it, you ask? Nope, she figured that out in 1.5 seconds. All she had to do was watch one of her brothers open it, and the world was her icebox again.
She gets her stubborn streak from her dad, who said something along the lines of, "She will not win!" (As God as my witness, I will never have cereal without milk again!) and he then came up with a brilliant idea (and it made me wish I had thought about it with the older kids when they were doing stupid shit like this.) He brought home a plastic chain and a combination padlock. I watched her afterwards, trying to figure out the lock, and I discovered one irrefutable fact - if you can't yet read numbers, you are never going to figure out a padlock. And if you're three you are positively not strong enough to break a plastic chain, even if you pull on it with all your might and stand sideways on the door.
After we padlocked the fridge, it took her about three weeks of trying to open it to finally understand that we didn't want her in there, although recent events have made me wonder if she truly learned to stay out of the fridge, or if she was just biding her time. Hmm. Anyway.
It's a really good thing she could't read, because I wrote the combination on the fridge, right next to the lock, with a note- Here's the combination to the padlock. If you can read, you're allowed to open it, don't even bother asking. Just make sure you lock it back or you're the one that will be cleaning up the mess she makes!
So, fingernail polish and cookies are not as bad as it could be, I guess. But of all the stuff she took, abused, and made a mess of, I surely miss my sanity the most! But I do love the little terror with all my heart. Even if she doesn't listen to me. At all. And even if she thinks she already knows everything.
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