the exploits of master destructo

we have developed specific coping strategies to deal with the antics of our beloved son tyler. nothing and nowhere is safe in this house. to make matters slightly easier we have resorted to tying up, locking down and generally battening down the hatches in our house.

in the kitchen, the chairs have to be kept on the table, or he drags them around to climb up to anything he wants. previously to doing this i caught him trying to put my ipod in the microwave, (the ipod which is now broken thanks to his efforts throwing it on the floor) and tring to flood the kitchen playing at the sink. also the fridge has to be locked.....

with a velcro strap or he takes what he wants and leaves the doors open. his favourites in here include spreading the butter all over the sofa and taking one bite out of every piece of fruit.

all the cupboards have those fiddly annoying locks in them, but this one has to have double protection so again it is tied together.

still, all this effort does not stop master destructo!! here follows some of his recent exploits:

drawing in black pen on the dining chairs.

drawing in the same black pen all over the wall in the living room. i nearly blamed this one on destructo's big sister as it is too high for destructo, until i realised that he had stood on the chair he had just scribbled on. the sneaky genius.

we got a pattern in black pen on the bedroom carpet, at least on one side of the bed. the other side features an elaborate circular motif in gold pen.

also in the last week, destructo broke into the spare room and found scissors. these he proceeded to test out on our superking size duvet cover and duvet. they work quite well, i can report. this is while i was in the shower one morning. when i came running out on the warning of destructo's sister he snuck into the bathroom behind me (in my haste i had forgotten to close the door - a fatal error) and smeared toothpaste and soap around and dunked my contact lenses in the toilet. thankfully i found him there before he aadded the whole toilet roll and tried to flush (the toilet does not like this, we have discovered. it responds by starting to overflow)

needless to say, it is not a safe thing to do to leave destructo to his own devices for more than about 30 seconds. so i was really taking leave of my senses when i stayed in bed the other morning and left the kids to watch tv downstairs. when i did finally surface, i went down with my heart hammering, fearing the sight that would confront me there. and what did i see? well....

this. i got off so lightly for my negligence that the surprised kids got hugs and laughing rather than the shouting they obviously expected. true, i had lost two whole loaves of bread, all the bananas and a couple of oranges but it was easy to clean up and no permanent damage - wayhey!!!

there may be light at the end of the tunnel. but i'm not taking the chairs down yet.....