I think these kids are going to make me go to therapy one day soon. It’s either that, or AA because they are soon going to drive me to drink, a lot. For those of you who follow my blog on Facebook, you already got to see Jackson practicing for a lifetime of fighting crime by being Spiderman. He climbed up to the top of the bookshelf part of their bureau and was just hanging out there. This was during naptime and thankfully, I happened to look into the monitor and saw his face. I couldn’t quite figure out why I was seeing it upside down, but now I know. I quickly ran into their room to make sure they were okay. Once I was assured that he was safe and just sitting there, I snapped a quick picture because, really, who would believe me? I got him safely down and threatened both of them within an inch of their lives. I told them that I would take their bureau and give it to kids who listened or that I would just throw it in the garbage. I told them how it was very dangerous and they would get bad boo boos if they climbed up there again. They seemed very upset and promised they wouldn’t do it again. I won’t bank on promises from two year olds, but they haven’t climbed up since then (that I’m aware of).

When I was pregnant with Taylor, I stumbled across an article where one child in a set of twins died when a piece of furniture fell on her. She was crushed and her little body wasn’t able to recover from the trauma. Her twin, and their parents were never the same, and they made it their mission to educate parents about these deaths. It is not something I was even thinking about at all when planning on having my first child, but we went right out and bought furniture straps and everything was secured to the wall before Taylor even arrived. We did the same thing for the boys’ room. I actually found their bureau / bookshelf combo on a tag sale site when they were around 18 months old and a good friend came over and helped secure the bookshelf portion to the bureau itself with sturdy L-Brackets, so it was solid and very secure. Thank you, Tommy! I am very thankful that I stumbled upon that article and honestly feel like it has already saved my kids ten times over. I am not one to give unsolicited parenting advice because we all do things differently, and that’s okay, but please anchor your furniture to the wall. You never know what kids can do in a matter of seconds. The straps are relatively inexpensive and easy to install. The ones we have can be found here.

Some nights, like tonight, the kids eat dinner so well. They sit in their chairs, eat a ton of food and even ask for more. Other nights, it’s a battle to get them to eat at all. Last night was one of those nights. I hate those nights. I want to say “Eat dinner or you don’t get anything until the next meal” but I worry about the boys, especially being preemies and underweight as is. Although their doctors say they are healthy and growing on their own preemie curve, they are still on the small side and I like to give them all the additional calories they can manage. Anyway, Joseph was sitting at the table an hour after his siblings were already finished and downstairs playing. He was messing around and playing with his food. Todd told him to cut it out, or he would go in time out. He looked right at Todd and said (with a straight face) “bull” We had to quickly put him in time out and go to another part of the house because we were laughing so much and didn’t want him to see us. We group texted my parents to tell them that story because “bull” is my dad’s response to everything I tell him involving the kids. “The boys did XYZ today.”//“Bull! I don’t believe that!” We are very conscious to not swear in front of the kids, but we were not expecting this to come out of his little mouth. Kids are hilarious. I guess Joseph wants to be just like his Brampy.

On a not so hilarious note, this morning, the boys woke me up with banging sounds. They pulled off their radiator cover and were hitting each other with it, banging it against the wall and their beds, and scraping it against the floor. As always, I quickly snapped a picture and then reprimanded them. I told them it wasn’t safe and it was not something to play with. I reattached it and thought all was said and done. Wrong. Nap time came around, and they again pulled it off and Joseph somehow got his little toe stuck inside the nasty, rusty radiator insides and then pulled his foot back out. He cut himself badly, and I went in the room to find blood everywhere. He was pretty calm about it and simply held his foot up to me saying “Oh no! Foot has a boo boo! I touched that thing!” I quickly cleaned him up and examined the wound. It looked like a massive paper cut, but much deeper. He had two separate flaps of skin that were just hanging around the wound. I applied some Neosporin and band-aids and called the pediatrician’s office because I wasn’t sure if he’d need to go to the ER for stitches and a tetanus shot. Thankfully, Nurse Dineen (hello again!) told me that he should be okay since the bleeding stopped and he didn’t need a tetanus shot because he was up to date on his vaccinations. She said to keep it clean and covered, and watch for infection. The boys took turns ripping the band-aids off today, but medical tape did the trick to keep it clean and covered. The poor pickle was walking around the house limping and saying that his foot hurt. He seemingly felt much better when Daddy walked in the house with dinosaur band-aids and donuts though!

One of our neighbors, who is an electrician (I think I’ve even written about him helping us before) came over and disconnected the entire radiator unit from the wall. Apparently, it was original to the house and there was just basically unpainted sheetrock behind it. He attached a wooden board to cover up where the electricity ran (so Houdini x2 wouldn’t electrocute themselves) and we knew we’d need to fix everything at some point and make it look pretty. We put the kids to bed and were relieved to be done with this day, but Todd went back into their room because he heard something. Within two minutes, they had punched a hole through the damn wall. They quickly blamed each other, and were not happy getting yelled at.  Jackson wouldn’t even make eye contact with me. We fixed what we could for the night, and then moved the beds to cover that portion of the wall so they couldn’t access it at all. I guarantee you, they will climb on the back of their beds to pull the shade down (which is why the beds were moved in the first place) but what else can we do?