Miss Mess and Mr. Mischief

Culprits: Taysum Guy
Bailey Grace

Crime: Joining forces to keep Mom and Dad's world upside down and hoppin'!!

Weapons: Stinkin' cuteness and cleverness, so you can't hardly stay mad at them for more than 2 seconds (or as long as it takes to clean up the mess anyway)

Sentence: A lifetime of love, laughs and joys of living(and an occasional time-out) ;)

OPERATION: DIRTY DISHIN'

Objective: Open and climb in dishwasher; put each clean dish in mouth and then throw it on the floor.




Strategy: Bring out the Baby Gate!!!!



Counter Attack: Push and pull on gate until it falls out of place. Neatly put gate to side, just where Mom puts it when she is not using it.



Checkmate: Pick up right where you left off!

OPERATION: FLOOR PLAN

Crime Report: One morning, I was at home training a teacher online. The kids were watching a movie...I thought...I heard them laughing together and it was really cute. The teacher said, "That's a great sound in the background!" I looked over at them, then looked back to the teacher and said, "Yeah...it's just too bad that the reason they're laughing is because they are running through a bowl of cereal they dumped." It wasn't too big of a deal...no milk ;). So, I continued to train. By the end of the training they had gone to play in Taysum's room, which they often do. I looked over and all the cereal had been picked up. I was very pleased! I went to check on them in Taysum's room...I would like to submit exhibit T and B:

When I walked in, Taysum instantly had a guilty face. Bailey greeted me with her typical "HI!!" As you can see, they decided the bowl wasn't enough...they went and got the entire box, which was just opened. It was actually pretty amazing! It wasn't all in just one or two spots...it was as if they had placed each piece...perfectly distributed across the entire room...including under the bed!

(FYI Kix do not vacuum up well...they are so light, they just blow away before they can get sucked up...so I had to use the attachment.)

OPERATION: TABLE TOPPER

Objective: Climb kitchen chair. Climb onto kitchen table. Sit in the middle and look cute as can be. (As a mom it's an odd sensation: you're smitten by her cuteness and worried she's going to fall off...again...all at the same time)

Strategy 1: Keep kitchen chairs pushed firmly in under table.

Counter Attack: Get big and strong enough to pull out chairs.


Strategy 2:




Result?: So far so good...

OPERATION: TOO SMART FOR OUR OWN GOOD!

Crime Report: So, I saved the best for last. Trying to be, calm, rational, educated parents (See Bill Cosby Himself), we have tried to introduce the concept of choices to Taysum. Instead of just saying, "NO" we try to give him a choice: eg "You can use nice words or you can sit in time out." So, in this case, he wanted some juice and was using a less than desireable tone to express his feelings when we had already told him he had had enough juice. As he would not stop yelling, I pulled out the "choice" strategy. The conversation went something like this:

"I WANT JUICE!!!!"
"You can use nice words or you can sit in timeout"
"NO TIME OUT!!! I WANT JUICE!!!"
"Juice is not a choice." "I WANT JUICE!!!!"

So then I went for the visual: I held up two fingers and told him what the choices were again and asked him which one he wanted. He calmly pointed to my third finger and said, "Juice!"

(This shot is staged at a later time; I didn't know if I could explain it very well)



VERDICT: HOW CAN YOU RESIST?!?