Heard around the house

Hypertot: Daddy, Daddy! Curtain Climber's on the table!
Daddy: Ok, I'm coming.
Hypertot: No, it's not ok! Curtain Climber's on the table!

Ah, the little literalist.

Permanent Marker on Computer Monitor

What do you do when you realize that a Monkeytot has written on your LCD (or other kind of) screen with permanent marker? You ask Artgal. And Artgal promptly tells you to use a dry erase marker to clean it. And it works.

One caution: use Heloise's advice, and wipe into the mark, not out from. If you wipe across your mark, it will smudge the dry erase ink and need more cleaning.

Note to Hypertot

I don't care how much you like or dislike bar soap. You can't wash your hands with toothpaste.

Note to Monkeytot

Remember when I said you couldn't put a bandage in your nose? I'm sorry, but you can't put one in your mouth, either. It just won't work.

Note to Monkeytot

No, you can't put a bandage in your nose, even if it is bleeding.

Note to Monkeytot

While I appreciate your generosity with the baby, I wish you would stop feeding him. Snickers bars and horseradish stroganoff are really not ideal baby foods.

Note to Monkeytot

I don't think you'll have much success slicing the cheddar cheese with a plastic wrench. Sorry. And no, you may not grab a sharp knife to do it with instead. And NO, the hunk is not for biting directly into.

Note to Hypertot

That's not a wrist brace. No, no, don't put it back in the bathroom cupboard where you found it; just go ahead and throw it away.

Note to Hypertot

Convention holds that the "magic word" is please, not abracadabra. Really.

Note to Hypertot

Honeybunch, you are indeed "allowed" to go to your room, and I suggest you go when told, regardless of your misconception. No, sending you there doesn't make Daddy a bad person, nor a bank robber, as you so eloquently stated, and I seriously doubt he's going to go to jail as a result. But nice try.

Note to Hypertot

I think it's great that you learned how to make your own peanut butter sandwiches; but do you think you could use a butter knife, instead of a plastic toy dagger?

Note to Self

In future, be sure to look closely at Hypertot's coat before sending him to preschool, to make sure it is actually a coat and not a snowsuit.

Mind if I Gripe?

I'm at my wits' end, and I wish I had some idea what to do. At this rate, there is reason to doubt that our three youngest will live to age 6. This is because three-year-old Hypertot, who is labeled as cognitively delayed, happens, also, to be a genius. Not your ordinary sort of genius, but the mad-scientist-mechanical-engineer sort. And a hyperactive one.

We've already given up on every safety device sold at Wal-Mart. He has outsmarted each and every one. He can open latches, unclasp straps, and open doors with doorknob covers effortlessly. He unhooks 6-foot-high eye hooks, removes tiny pins from hasps, and breaks right through locking cabinets, removing the doors from the hinges if necessary. He's twice removed his bedroom door from the hinges. Childproof lids on medicines and bleach are a joke. The only two things that have ever worked were a backwards doorknob lock, and heavy duty magnetic cabinet locks. The backwards doorknob lock is simple: a regular lockable bedroom doorknob with a lock, the sort you can pick with your fingernail if you know how. He hasn't yet figured out what we're doing, but it's just a matter of time. The magnetic lock is invisible from the outside, and requires a powerful magnet to be applied at the exact right spot to open.

My Charming and Patient Husband must, by now, be losing his patience. Saturday we spent the morning buying safety items at Home Depot. (Magnetic locks for the cabinets and a locking doorknob for the laundry room. The magnetic locks, by the way, are quite costy.) He spent the afternoon installing them, with no small effort. The doorknob was the first simple doorknob installation in this house, because all the doorknobs in the front of the house were a smaller size (older house) and he had to redrill the holes. But the magnetic locks are a bear. They're worth both the cost and the effort, because everyone says the same thing about them: children who can break through every other safety can't break through these.

But they don't have a Hypertot. This afternoon, we discovered a puddle of bleach where he'd poured it out on the kitchen floor, and one-year-old Monkeytot locked under the sink.

Yes, he's figured out how to open the cupboards with the UNBREAKABLE locks, without using a magnet.

Well, at least it's been two days since he's put her in the dryer.

Note to Hypertot

I don't care what Simon says, I am not going to pick my nose.

Start Them Catholics Young

Hypertot to me:
"I'm going to pray to Mary."

Hypertot to God:
"God, please make Mary feel better."

His bus driver, Mary, had a substitute today, and we suspect she was sick.
I've really got to work on those prepositions with him.

edit: Silly me, first I should work on my own prepositions. Actual conversation quote now corrected.

Note to Monkeytot

As a general rule, pouring Kix on the floor, stepping on them, and licking your feet is not considered an ideal way to eat. Would you consider a bowl?

Note to Monkeytot

You are not two yet. Get up off the floor and stop screaming.

Note to Hypertot

Neither one of you is Sparticus. Now stop arguing.

Note to Hypertot

The car in the next door neighbor's driveway is there because it belongs to him. I don't care how much you like cars, please resist the temptation to open other people's cars and play with their steering wheels.

Monkeytot

(She's Hypertot's little sister, who just turned 1 this month.)

Monkeytot: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Me: Oh yeah?
Monkeytot: Yeah!

Tomorrow is my Carmelite meeting. Yaaay, grownups!