Changes

Recently:

• The kids brought all the steak knives downstairs and used them to gouge holes in the wall.
• William trashed my parents washroom by decorating it with toothpaste, shaving cream, and shampoo.
• William undoes his seatbelt in the car whenever he's annoyed at us.
• And of course you already know about the ketchup and the yogurt incidences.

This lead to the conclusion that:

• The kids need more attention.
• The kids need more supervision.
• Our house needs to be more kid proof.

And so:

• We've put away the kid's computer and locked out the tv, so that the kids will have only the good kind of play time.  Too often William refuses to go anywhere because he's too busy watching tv or surfing youtube.
• Adam has gone hogwild with baby proofing.  Since our kids aren't babies, this requires a little creativity.  Any lock I can figure out, William can figure out too, so we have to keep things out of his reach (and hope he isn't determined enough to get a chair).
• We've changed William's booster back to a 5-point harness.
• We're going to try and actually pay attention to our kids.

Today was our first test of our changes.  We went to the zoo. So we were having good parent/kid relations, and giving them a fun outting, but we kind of cheated because we didn't have long to deal with the no tv and computer thing.  I dread not having the screens around to "babysit" the offspring when I have writing to do during the week.  Of course, the fact that I'm so dependent on these devices makes me feel like a neglectful parent. (Plus the tv is a lousy babysitter, it did nothing to prevent the knives in the wall).   No longer!  From now on I will play hotwheels tracks and go to the park at least as often as I sit down to write.  All I have to do is get up early, and possibly clone myself.