Need a Demolition Crew? Hire Your Children.

Today alone, I've had to tighten two doorknobs, board up a busted window, and re-lay a portion of carpet.

Yesterday, I had to reassemble a remote-control Lightning McQueen, remove a poptart from the VCR (which fortunately, we don't even use anymore), and snake out the toilet.

God help us when we have company over that brings extra children.

 If you're wondering whether I watch my children or not, the answer is of course yes.  It's amazing the amount of damage a group of children (or two children, in my case) can do in the 5 minutes it takes to set up the dinner table or change a diaper. 

The problem is, my girls aren't necessarily destructive, they're just curious (the disassembled Lighting McQueen and the poptart in the vcr) and a bit hyper.  Add to my two girls the four children of one of our friends (two boys and two girls), and you can count on a cataclysmic disaster. 

In fact, after a two-week stint of their family staying in our house in order to find a house to move into, I was surprised that our house was still STANDING, let alone almost completely intact (minus a couple of windows).

I find myself wondering sometimes how my friend with four children isn't completely bald and muttering incoherently somewhere in a closet.  But I digress.

At any rate, I've come to the conclusion that if I ever hit the lottery, I'm building a large padded room with no electrical outlets for my children to play in.  I've even considered building a giant hamster wheel and hooking it up to a generator for my children to run off some of their energy on.  I'd never have to pay an electric bill again. 

In the meantime, short of having my girls on my hip at any and all times, I know enough to keep a tool set handy (and out of THEIR reach, lol), and plenty of tylenol in the house.  I'm not to the Prozac point yet because, as crazy at it seems, I actually enjoy the fact that my girls are so inquizitive. 

I just wish that once they've pulled something apart, they'd be able to put it back together on their own. 

I see some engineering classes in their futures...