Egged, Toilet Papered, and Vandalized

Jonah and Lincoln are in an interesting time of life. They're in the time of the life where they are equal parts destructive, chaotic, and cute, often all at once. We'll start with the cute.

My friend let me borrow a scrunchie one day for a workout. You know, like the 1990s style scrunchie? The kind I haven't worn since I was 9 years old. I put it in my hair one afternoon when Jonah started staring at me confused. 

Finally he said, "Mom, What's that on you?"

I wasn't sure what he was talking about so I just looked at him looking confused at me.

Then he offered a guess, "...a sock?"

Over Christmas break Eli discovered the art of sleeping in. One morning he came downstairs:

Eli: "It's pretty easy to sleep in."

Me: "You're just now figuring that out?"

Eli: "No."

...

Eli: "I figured it out like two days ago."

Eli and Carson were playing Apples to Apples. The adjective laid down was "cute."

Eli bashfully said, "If I had 'girlfriend,' I would put that there."

This was the first time Eli has really shown any interest in girls and I thought it was...well...cute!

After waking up to see Lincoln had destroyed the house in his first lonely moments of being the first one awake. 

Me: "Lincoln, what happened this morning?"

Lincoln: "Well, I was good in the first place...but not in the second place."

Lincoln trying to sing the words to "Old Town Road." The words are "Can't nobody tell me nothing." and Lincoln, being confused by the double negatives, translated it to, "Somebody tell me something." 

While eating tomato soup and grilled cheese for dinner, I put some celery sticks stuffed with tuna on the table. Trying to catch the boys' interest, I said, "Who wants a celery boat?!?" I put them on the table and started eating my dinner. Before long I looked over at Lincoln who had put his celery stick in his tomato soup and with great disappointment announced that the boat didn't float.

Carson is so cute to help his little brothers get breakfast every morning. This is a lifesaver to help mom and dad get a few extra minutes of sleep!

Lincoln and Jonah had the naughtiest month of their lives in February. They were completely insane. I could not leave them out of my sight for one minute without full mayhem being brought upon the house. In fact, I had to instill a "babysitting" policy. They had to stay right next to me at all times because I had to "babysit" them because I didn't trust them being anywhere without me. Let me show you what they do when momentarily left unsupervised...

One afternoon Lincoln tried to tell me Jonah had found scissors upstairs. I was sure this wasn't true because all of our scissors are kept downstairs and I checked to make sure they were all securely out of reach. I was sure Jonah had found a toy or something unthreatening.

Moments later, I heard giggling and decided I should go see what all the laughter was about. The thing I have learned in the month of February is that I should live in fear of my own children's laughter. Lincoln was quick to let me know "Jonah" had cut the blinds and the curtains. Sure enough, I found two sets of blinds snipped and one curtain panel sliced. Wwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhyyyyyyyyyy?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!??!?!???!!!!!!!!!!!

Every day I try to start anew with hope that the boys are over their naughtiness. I had some extra valentines leftover from Valentine's Day and I thought it would be nice to let the younger boys play with the toys, you know, to keep them out of trouble for a minute so I could clean up lunch. Within one minute I turned around and found the boys shrieking with laughter as they smashed the dinosaurs onto our tile floor, shattering the failed entertainment attempt and my hopes for the day.

One day they were being eerily quiet, so I ran upstairs, bracing myself for what kind of disaster I might find. Turns out they were "playing bedtime" in their room and were quietly and perfectly reading books and then laying in bed. I guess they aren't all bad. :)

Or maybe they were just resting up for their high adventure afternoon plans -- toilet papering the whole upstairs! DO THEY NOT KNOW HOW VALUABLE TOILET PAPER IS RIGHT NOW?!?

When I'm sick of them ripping the house apart or vandalizing their own property, I coax them outside because what harm can be done outside?

Oh, you know, they might just find a ladder, bring it to the fence, pile rocks on the fence, and then wait patiently for cars to pass by for target practice. That's normal.

The blog was originally going to stop here. But I never got around to this post and lucky for you, the shenanigans have continued. I have no explanation to this other than I walked past the room and beheld the destruction with the same feelings of wonder and confusion you are now feeling. 

 Carson was eager to get in on the naughtiness.

 Jeff got home from work one day and said, "I had such a long day. I had to follow these two guys around town all day doing surveillance on them." I looked at him and assured him his surveillance duties were not done. We had two little criminals in the house that also required constant surveillance. I went on and on about how you can't leave them for two seconds because they strike so fast and do the craziest, most unexpected things at record speed.

And in the five minutes that conversation was happening, Jonah had managed to unroll an entire roll of toilet paper. It was brand new. I had put it fresh on the roll LITERALLY FIVE MINUTES BEFORE, and not only did he unroll it all, he shoved it all into the toilet as well. And not only did he unroll it all, shove it all in the toilet, he also began persistently flushing the toilet paper. When that didn't work, he seems to have recognized the toilet was clogged, so he did the logical thing and inserted the plunger into the toilet to begin plunging the glob of toilet paper. ALL OF THT HAPPENED IN FIVE MINUTES!

 And while the toilet paper fiasco was unrolling downstairs, another one was unrolling upstairs. Again, RESPECT THE TP, PEOPLE! QUARANTINE IS COMING!

Okay, like, the toilet papering is one thing. Fine. But he topped it off with drawing a smiley face on our bed. When asked why, "I wanted to decorate your room pretty." 

 After giving the boys their lunch, hard-boiled eggs and toast, I ran upstairs to put mascara on. When I returned, this was what greeted me.

They appeared to have used the yolks of their eggs as crayons and drew all over the floor with them. Because why would you eat food when you can destroy your house with it. BAAAAAHHHH!!!!

Here kids, color so I can clean up the egg smeared into our floors...

These boys are nonstop! We did a Zoom call with my family this week and apparently everyone was very entertained by the chaos that is our everyday life. Someone is always into something, something's always getting broken, and we are no respecters of toilet paper. Luckily we don't know any different!