Things I've Learned from Raising My Boys

This is a little list I put together about a year ago, and I came across it on my computer the other day and decided to add a little to it and post it here. Enjoy!

Things I've Learned from Raising my Boys (so far):

1. Whenever there is silence, something is going on.

2. It’s probably not something good.

3. No matter how expensive the new toy is (or how entertaining it is to you and your spouse), the cord to the nearest lamp will always be more exciting to your child.

4. If most of your home is full of hand-me down furniture or cheap pieces of furniture that you purchased at Wal-Mart and had to assemble yourself; your one-year-old will choose one of the only nice pieces of furniture in the home to destroy.

5. A one-year-old thinks that it is funny to bite down on the leather seat of a piano bench and pull his head back, leaving little white holes all along the black leather seat.

6. A two-year-old can empty a tall bookshelf of family albums and important documents in less than 40 seconds.

7. A pet chinchilla can outrun a one-year-old.

8. A pet chinchilla cannot always outrun a two-year-old.

9. A chinchilla sheds an incredible amount of fur when it is scared.

10. A two-year-old and his one-year-old brother can empty a refrigerator of all its contents (food, milk, shelves and drawers) in less than 1 minute and 30 seconds.

11. A two-year-old can reach things that are placed at three times his own height.

12. A little boy might normally run away when you want a hug, but when he has a runny nose, hugging is all he wants to do.

13. A Christmas tree is never safe from a two-year-old, even if you surround it with a large circular baby gate.

14. When a two-year-old pulls over a Christmas tree, throws ornaments around the room, and plays with the broken glass, he will not cry when he cuts his hands on that glass.

15. He will cry when you try to take the broken glass away from him.

16. Even though a two-year-old might know better than to drink laundry detergent, it won’t stop him from getting it out and squirting it on the floor so that his one-year-old brother can lick it up.

17. Even though a two-year-old may know better, it will not stop him from opening a diaper pail and letting his one-year-old brother play with the contents.

18. No matter how mature a two-year-old seems when he has decided he is old enough to start potty training, he is never old enough to leave in the bathroom alone.

19. He will find something to put in the toilet and try flushing it repeatedly before you can reach him.

20. If given the opportunity, a two-year-old boy will turn on the gas stove while his parents aren’t looking.

21. If a gas stove is turned on (but the burner is not lit) right before the family leaves home for several hours, the entire apartment will be filled with gas by the time the family returns home.

22. Fortunately, pet chinchillas are hardy animals and can survive being in a room full of gas fumes for a few hours.

23. Even though his stomach is supposedly the size of his fist, a one-year-old boy can eat a half-pound of lunchmeat in one sitting, and be hungry for the next meal a few hours later.

24. A one-year-old thinks that he can do everything that his two-year-old brother can do.

25. When you finally get fed up enough of all the toys being dumped out of the toy box over and over that you decide to screw the toy box into the wall, you need to realize that this will only last a few weeks until the one and two-year-olds realize that if they sit in the toy box and push hard enough against the wall, they can pull the screws out.

26. This is when you realize it is time to invest in a stud finder.

27. A two-year-old boy takes about 3 seconds to learn how to climb onto the kitchen counter.

28. A one-year-old boy can easily climb under a bed.

29. Getting out from under the bed is another story.

30. A one-year-old and a two-year-old can conspire to hide the television remote control, and two adults will never be able to find it again.

31. Once you teach a two-year-old a song he likes (especially one with hand motions), be prepared to continue singing it over and over for at least the next hour.

32. A one-year-old is not too young to realize that if he is playing with his two-year-old brother and he cries loudly, his parents will usually scold the two-year-old for not sharing the toys.

33. In the defense of the one-year-old, the two-year-old usually is not sharing the toys.

34. A two-year-old has radar that immediately detects the one time that you forget to replace the baby lock on the closet doors.

35. For a two-year-old, the idea that he has to pick up all those clean clothes that he dumped all over the floor sounds like a fun game, not a punishment.

36. There really is no such thing as “baby proof.”

37. Any bookshelf is a ladder.

38. Any toy that enters the home automatically belongs to the two-year-old (even if it comes wrapped and labeled with the name of the one-year-old), and you will never convince the two-year-old otherwise.

39. A two-year-old boy can easily outrun a reasonably in-shape 24-year-old woman.

40. When you accidentally lock your one-year-old in the car, the Milwaukee police department takes about 15 minutes to arrive and jimmy the car door open for you.

41. 15 minutes lasts forever when your one-year-old is sitting happily in your car, finding pennies and candy wrappers to chew on and you are searching for the best stone to use to smash the car window open in case the happy one-year-old starts choking on the penny before the police arrive.

42. The police do not give you a ticket or make you pay a fine for accidentally locking your child in the car, but they do record your name and your child’s name in a police report.

43. No matter how many times you tell him “no,” a one-year-old boy will always knock over the piano bench one more time.

44. A one-year-old boy may not be able to climb in and out of his crib yet.

45. But his two-year-old brother can climb in, at 6:00am, and he will bring his large toy trucks with him, so they can throw them over the edge onto the wooden floor together.

46. The neighbors in the apartment building do not appreciate this form of an alarm clock.

47. When visiting relatives, even if you think that you have removed most of the large hazards from a bedroom, a one-year-old boy and his two-year-old brother will find something to get into.

48. A one-year-old and a two-year-old can accumulate a pile of shredded paper that measures about 2 x 3 feet if they find their aunt’s scriptures and remove several books from the New Testament.

49. A one-year-old boy may not be able to climb out of a playpen by himself.

50. If a two-year-old boy is impatient for his little brother to get up in the morning and play with him, he will ‘help’ him get out of the playpen by tipping the entire playpen over on it’s side.

51. It doesn’t take long for the two-year-old to realize that he can also tip the playpen entirely upside down, effectively trapping the one-year-old in a ‘cage.’

52. It only takes about 20 seconds for a one-year-old and a two-year-old to dump a bottle of black ink on brand new carpeting in a new house.

53. Surprisingly, it takes a couple days, but two women scrubbing the carpet for hours on end can actually remove much of the ink until there is only a grey spot on the carpet, rather than a dark black one.

54. Escalators are very exciting toys, especially if you can get onto one before Mommy can catch you.

55. If given the chance, a two-year-old boy will throw his shoes from the second floor of the shopping mall down to the ground floor.

56. It takes about 15 adults 20 minutes to find a lost two-year-old boy at a church building.

57. A two-year-old boy who has never sat still for more than 3 minutes at a time before, can sit still and silent behind a stack of folding chairs in a church classroom for 20 minutes while his parents and other adults walk through that room several times searching for him and calling his name.

58. After running around inside and outside a church building for 20 minutes thinking of all the terrible things that could possibly have happened to her missing two-year-old son, a 9-month-pregnant woman feels like she is going to go into labor for the next few hours.

59. While supposedly taking a nap, a two-year-old will find the set of crayons packed at the bottom of a full storage bin under numerous other items and color all over the rug, wall, and door.

60. When visiting relatives, even if you strip every item from a bedroom, take pictures and mirrors off the walls, use zip ties to secure all the doors and drawers of the armoire, and install a baby gate in the bedroom doorway; a two-year-old and a three-year-old will still find something in the bedroom to get into when they are supposed to be asleep.

61. The two- and three-year-olds will pull stuffing from the underside of the mattress on the bed.

62. The two- and three-year-olds will find any tiny cracks around the window and pull the plaster off the wall around these spots.

63. The two- and three-year-olds will pull the window coverings off of the windows.

64. And the two- and three-year-olds will wake up in the early hours of the morning, push over the baby gate in their bedroom doorway, make their way to the opposite side of the house, and empty all the file papers from a dining room hutch before the three-year-old will wake up members of the household by calling for help because his arm is stuck in a drawer of the hutch.

65. A loving grandmother will be forgiving and will still want said two- and three-year-olds to return for another visit.

66. It takes two grown women a full day to put up a Winnie-the-Pooh wallpaper border to decorate a baby’s room.

67. It takes a three-year-old less than 2 minutes to remove a wallpaper border from the walls.

68. Everyone says that you should wait until your child is ready and shows signs of interest in using the toilet before beginning potty training.

69. Just because your child likes to sit on a potty chair and he will pee in the toilet on command every time you set him on the toilet, does not necessarily mean that he is ‘ready.’

70. Parents are advised not to start potty training at a time in the child’s life when there will be major changes (such as a move or the birth of a sibling).

71. Starting potty training 3 months before the due date of the child’s sibling is not enough time for the child to be fully trained long before the new baby arrives.

72. Anyone who tells you that their child was completely potty-trained in less than a week is either lying or their child is amazing.

73. If your child does not fall under the ‘amazing’ category above, you may need to expect that potty training will take up to a full year to really take effect.

74. Once your child really is completely potty trained – doesn’t need reminders, uses the bathroom without much help, stays dry overnight and at naptime, and doesn’t use diapers at all anymore – it really does seem like maybe that whole year of potty training was worth it.

75. A fire alarm placed within four feet of the floor is not safe from a two-year-old boy.

76. When a fire alarm is pulled at a medical college party, the lights flash and a loud alarm goes off, and some security guards will eventually come to turn the alarm off.

77. Luckily, pulling such an alarm does not trigger ceiling sprinklers to turn on.

78. A potty-trained three-year-old is old enough to go in and use the restroom with out constant supervision.

79. An almost-potty-trained two-year-old is often ok using the bathroom by himself.

80. If the two-year-old is in the restroom too long, you can expect to clean up soap and water from the counters and floors.

81. If the two-year-old and the three-year-old happen to be in the bathroom together, it is just too tempting for the three-year-old – no matter how much he knows better, the three-year-old will be compelled to help the two-year-old spread soap and water over the counters and floors.

82. Even without moving from his seat at the center of a large picnic blanket, an 8-month-old boy will somehow get a hold of large leaves to eat.

83. It takes a two-year-old about 5 minutes to empty all the toys from his bedroom closet.

84. It takes the two-year-old, his big brother, and his mom almost an hour to sort through all the toys and get them all put away back in the closet again.

85. Even if a latch is attached to keep the closet door locked, a two-year-old will push his Lego table over to the closet, stand on it, and reach up to undo the latch and open the closet so that he can spend the next 5 minutes emptying his closet again.

86. If the Lego table is placed out of reach on top of the top bunk of the bunk beds during naptime, the two-year-old will turn his focus from the closet to the dresser drawers.

87. It takes a two-year-old about 3 minutes empty a dresser of all of his and his brother’s clothing.

88. It takes a mom about 20 minutes to re-fold and put away all the clothes in the dresser.

89. It takes a mom a lot longer to sort through all the clothes when the two-year-old empties the clean clothes out of the dresser and then mixes them with the dirty clothes from the laundry basket.

90. Two adults can make a container of foaming hand soap last for several months.

91. A two-year-old will go through half a bottle of hand soap in 3 days.

92. A 9-month-old boy does not need to be old enough to walk in order to be able to turn the television off and on, open and close the doors to the bookshelf, get into the trash can, open kitchen drawers, turn the computer off, and pull toilet paper off the roll.

93. It can take 15 to 20 seconds before the Heimlich maneuver works on a two-year-old boy.

94. 15 seconds can seem like forever.

95. If a two-year-old hears you tell his three-year-old brother that the three-year-old may not ‘help’ get the large pitcher of water out of the fridge because it is too heavy, the two-year-old will not realize that this also means that he, the two-year-old, may not take out the heavy pitcher.

96. A mother of three small boys is grateful for a pitcher of water spilled all over the kitchen floor because, as this mother is cleaning up the water from the floor, she is thinking how much more sticky it would have been to clean up, had the pitcher been full of juice.

97. The telephone number for poison control is 1-800-222-1222.

98. The people at poison control are very nice and helpful.

99. Small doses of the following items have not proven fatal in our home: nail polish remover, nasal spray, berries from the tree outside, laundry detergent, Echinacea, berries from the bushes in a friend’s yard.

100. If given the chance, a two-year-old boy will throw his sandals into an animal enclosure at the zoo.

101. A zookeeper will come with a long hook to get the sandals out of the animal enclosure, but the zookeeper will give you a look that lets you know she thinks that anyone who could allow their two-year-old to do such a thing must be a pretty lousy mother.

102. A two-year-old may be old enough to know better than to eat crayons.

103. This may not stop him from tasting them.

104. A three-year-old boy and his two-year-old brother know better than to splash in the toilet water, but their 10-month-old brother thinks that this is a wonderful pastime.

105. A hug and a kiss will fix almost any problem.

106. It’s all worth it when your baby smiles at you or your toddler tells you that he loves you.