Sabotage

Some days I feel like I am being sabotaged. I will be cleaning an area of the house and move on to the next only to find that the one I just cleaned is already a mess again. My kids seem to think that they need to get all the toys out at once when they are playing and we are trying to get them to decide what they want to play with, so they can leave the rest of it alone until they are ready to put the first away. Maybe that is an impossible goal, but it sure would be nice. Our play room in the basement is not even finished yet (we do have carpet and paint picked out-yay!) and my husband says he has already accepted that it will be a constant disaster. I have a little more hope than that but maybe I am only dreaming.

Even though it seems like I always have someone in the house going through the terrible twos, I started to think I was going to get off pretty easy. I didn't have to take a lot of extra precautions like some parents (locking the toilet seat or safety latches on cabinets etc.) I didn't use to have to worry about the bathroom door being left open since they rarely caused too much trouble and the worst was ususally a box of kleenex all over the house. However lately they have been getting into more trouble. Perhaps it is spring fever, but even my four year old who should know better by now still seems to want to participate in some of the activities like coloring on the walls. Here are some pictures of their latest work.

One day I found Beck in my bathroom with my make-up all over him and all over my floor. It took 3 washings to get the lip stick out of the rug.

It was just like the next day that I found both my kids art work on my walls in crayon and pen. Luckily my cousins wife had just sent me a list of cleaning tricks like alcohol to remove pen and baking soda to remove crayon that helped. You can see it worked pretty well. The first picture is after I had been scrubbing for a few minutes. It was actually much darker to begin with.

I can't wait to see what trouble they will get in when I am distracted by a new baby. Hopefully with the better weather they can spend more time outdoors and not make messes indoors. For now I guess I will go on cleaning and re-cleaning and trying to keep a better eye on what they are up to at all times.