I've just failed Parenting Rule 1

[BellaBearisWideAwake]

if your child is being quiet in another room ALWAYS investigate. No good can come of it.

Half a roll of toilet paper down the loo, thanks DS2.

We were in our room on holiday, all bumbling around when we suddenly realised how quiet it was.

We found DS, in the tiny bathroom, happily unspinnning the 2 nd toilet roll. He was knee deep in loo roll and the look of complete bliss on his face was worth it.

I covered the cat in Vaseline.

When I was a child, obviously. You don't have to hide the cat next week Bella :o

2.7 yo DS painted our newly decorated bathroom with a tester pot last week. DD2 6.8 had helpfully got it out of the airing cupboard for him.

Rule number 3 : Get the order right!
When DS was small and wanted to do some painting, he sat at the table I got the paint out then went to get some paper ...... luckily the wall had that kind of paint that was wipable now - after that I always put the paper on the table first!!

Turned round after a suspiciously quiet five minutes the other day to find that D had carefully packed her right nostril with peas. Had to go to A&E and get them removed.

Godson visited and decorated our utility room with blue squeezy paint. And himself. And then walked through the house leaving lottle blie footprints everywhere. Parents were mortified, but it was hysterical. We put him in the paddling pool in the garden and tried to hose him down. He was blue for a week.

Ya have to remember that even when your own kids are responsible enough to ask if they want to get the art stuff out, it might just be too tempting for visitors....

Dd1 and a friend once tipped every single toy out of every single box in the playroom. I'd only gone downstairs for two minutes to fetch juice. When I got back I couldn't get in. There was no room to walk on the floor, so they were both walking round the walls using those ikea floating shelves.

Parenting rule #what are we up to now? - Beware of leaving small dcs in the care of kind auntie whose dcs are older and who has forgotten rule #1.

I am said kind auntie and last time I looked after my niece she fake-tanned her baby brother. He was a lovely orange colour when she collected him. Sorry SIL.

madwoman that made me laugh so hard I sprayed tea on the keyboard.

She FAKE-TANNED the baby?!?!?!?

When I was pregnant and ill I figured if I could hear ds chatting quietly to himself, ie not cackling nor silent, it would be ok.

Well it was, apart from him colouring himself with 'chicken pox' in permanent brown marker. He'd done a whole arm and half a leg. Looked like viteligo. Have to confess I felt so rough I just swapped him a washable marker and let him get on with it...

Yep, she got hold of fake tan from my bathroom and decorated her brother with it. He was just over a year old and they were (or so I thought) playing really nicely with the toys I had put out in the living room. SIL saw the funny side thankfully and still lets me look after them.

YY to the nail varnish. I once followed an ominous silence and a strong smell of varnish up the stairs to find ds2 painting his nails (and feet, and hands, and the carpet) with bright pink varnish. He must have strong little hands...

My DM tells the story of when I was little (still in nappies) when she realised I'd been a bit too quiet for a bit too long- apparently I was carefully pulling strips of wallpaper off the walls in my room and with each accompanying wiggle my (full) nappy was wriggling its way further down my legs

My aunt left her two boys, aged 3 and 5 outdoors painting while she went in to answer the phone. When she came back out they had both stripped off completely and had painted each other, literally head to foot - scrotum, bum crack, in between toes, behind ears, the whole lot. She has an absolutely brilliant photo of them that will make them rue that day with all their might once they're teenagers

My DS (16 months) has a worrying tendency to dismantle things. He got at the tv cabinet the other day, took out the Wii ISing microphones, disconnected them from the control box thingy, took the control box apart and took out all of the usb connector cables. I managed to get it back together but if it had been any more complicated I'd have been stuck. I just hope he never does that to anything valuable!

After a hunt that went on c2hours I found our phone handset down the loo! Sadly it is no more. I only left the room for 2 mins!

DS2 is still in his throw things down the loo phase. Such fun.

It's an ominous silence, isn't it, when a child is silent.

Once I was lying down bfeeding DS when I heard a gentle noise very close to my ear - DD was quietly cutting my hair off...

My nephew (whilst at his Gran's not mine) fed a whole pack of baby wipes down the loo one at a time. Whilst she was distracted trying to sort that out he found a bottle of nail varnish which he spilt over her lounge carpet

Learning how to get the nappy off and pooing on the floor is a dreadful stage.
Also learning how to open cupboards and eat everything they find. And spill the rest on the floor....arrgh

DD1 (3) covered, literally covered DD2 (15mo) with Vaseline last week. Her hair was thick with it. It took about 7 washes (over 4 days) to get it all out of her hair yes I did try Fairy liquid and no it didn't work

She did however look remarkably like Jedward in the intervening time.

I am still finding smears of Vaseline in unexpected places now!

Somehow DS2 found the Sudocream when he was little. It was over him top to toe and his clothes plus the carpet too. It is really hard to get it out of carpet.

DS2 has done the loo roll down the toilet. I caught him just as he was about to flush.

Another quiet moment from DS2 - he'd climbed on to a dining chair, on to the table, opened the serving hatch thingy, climbed through the serving hatch onto the kitchen worktop and was just walking along the worktop when I found him. He'd seen something on top of the fridge and decided he wanted to get it.

(As I'd been in the kitchen, he went into the dining room and then as I left the kitchen, he was going into the kitchen - still sounds bad though).

Polygon that made me laugh so much.

After a quiet moment I discovered my then 2 year old ds very carefully sticking every single one of my sanitary towels to the toilet so the lid was stuck closed. It took ages to get the toilet lid up.

Oh and he had one stuck under each foot. "Slippers mummy".

Ah yes, "feminine hygiene" products. I've walked into my bedroom to find DS2 had taken a tampon from the drawer and was pretending to applying lipstick because it reminded him of a Lypsyl.

I don't remember any incidents like this with DS1. Talk about being lulled into a false sense of security.