Tallying up the Carnage...

Its been 5 hours and so far this Holy Terror on two feet has:

Crumpled a black and white photo of her mother's Great Grandparents
Broke a picture frame
Cut her finger on a dryer vent I was trying to install
Was eating the dogs dog food (I think she was telling me she was hungry)
Left me 3 soaking wet diapers and one really stinky one

Man this babysitting thing is not as easy as it sounds. I mean just look at her. Sure she looks all cute and innocent feeding her baby a bottle in the picture, but behind that 23 pounds, 31 inch high frame their lies a young woman who is scheming, pondering, planning her next reign of holy terror. Man I cannot believe I actually wanted her to learn how to walk. Now all I do is chase her around and try to prevent one catastrophe after another. The only reason I can type this now is because she is strapped into her booster seat eating lunch.

Well 4 more hours till Mom gets home. How much damage do you think she can inflict in that amount of time? Maybe not much, I found some 3 pound ankle weights for exercising that should keep her from climbing on too much stuff.

I hear you Travis, but you know what my Mom would say..........??

"Why do MEN make everything to do with KIDS look so darn hard to do........ "

Cheers!

I agree...

Add one more to the list. the little terror just pulled out all the flowers out of her cottages window boxes....For some reason they don'tlooklike they did when Mommy arranged them.

Travis Johnson said:

but behind that 23 pounds, 31 inch high frame their lies a young woman who is scheming, pondering, planning her next reign of holy terror.

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It's not just little girls.

My 3 year old son, Julio (the one in my wifes arms in my pic), has been blaming his older brother for everything. If he breaks something he blames his brother with a confident, "Diego did it." No matter what it is or how obvious it is that Diego did not do it he still lies and blames Diego.

One day at dinner my wife and I tried to explain to him to stop lying and blaming Diego so we just asked him, "who did it?" It was just an arbritrary question becouse nothing had happend but his automatic responce to "who did it?" was always . "Diego did it."

So he responded just as expected with "Diego did it." I tried to make it clear to him by sounding very authorative that Diego did not do it to which he answered with a nod and a even more authorative sounding, "Diego did it."

Then my wife tried the repeat-after-me-approach, she said, "Julio look at me, say I did it."

She expected him to repeat the phrase 'I did it' instead he immedietly turned and looked at me and with a pointing thumb towards his mother he said, "moma did it."

All efforts at attitude adjustment broke down at that point.

Who was it that just said...."Well my wife and I decided that we want to be foster parents."??

You wait 18 months for a child to begin speaking and another 18 years for them to shut up.
It's great. Enjoy every moment. That 18 years will be here tomorrow.

Speaking of talking kids....don't make the mistake I did...Thought it would be funny for my daughter to know how to get me a beer from the fridge or take them to other's in the house...it was cute to most until last week in the grocery store when she started screeming and pointing "BEER DADDY, BEER FOR DADDY?" when we walked down the beer isle, kinda embarrassing...she'll be 2.5 next week.

Julio, our oldest daughter went through a similar phase. What we did was start asking questions about, "who did," and then made it about something good, like, "who did the beds" and when they said the other, heaps of praise or some such thing happened, taught her to be a better listener! (at least more discriminate)

LMAO! That's not so bad really, Travis. Over the holidays I got the priviledge of watching my 15 month old twin grandsons... for 30 min. It was the most exhausting 30 min of my life (and we raised 5 of our own). Into absolutely everything... and going in opposite directions in the process.

When I was a youngster... I'd guess somewhere around 6 or 8 give or take a couple of years, my Dad was relaxing on the couch watching Hockey Night in Canada with a Molsen Canadien. Well, inquisitive type that I was, I asked if I could have a sip of his beer. He said sure, and proceeded as I took a teeny little sip, made a face and handed it back. After playing with my Lego's awhile longer, I came back and asked 'Dad, can I have a sip of our beer?'. He chuckled and I repeated the sip and the face again. Not long after that, He takes a swig of beer. "Dad! You're Drinking My Beer!" was my classic line. 35 years later and I'm still living that one down.

Ned Bulken said:

He takes a swig of beer. "Dad! You're Drinking My Beer!" was my classic line. 35 years later and I'm still living that one down.

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I love it!

Travis Johnson said:

Man this babysitting thing is not as easy as it sounds.

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Ahem.

When it is your own child, it is NOT "babysitting".

It's "parenting". Or rather, it's just your life.

Ned Bulken said:

..."Dad! You're Drinking My Beer!" was my classic line. 35 years later and I'm still living that one down.

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That's one of those phrases that sticks to you forever, Ned. Great story.