Safety scissors, my ass.

One might assume, due to the numerous sappy and hormonal posts about my heart-wrenching, never-ending love and adoration for my newborn daughter, in addition to my lack of regular posting, that the usual drama of my life has simply gone missing.

One would be wrong. Very, very wrong. There has been drama, and lots of it. Enough drama, in fact, that my number one priority at 9 a.m. Monday morning is to call my OB/GYN and demand a prescription of X*anax with unlimited refills.

Garrett is the source of most of my stress and anxiety. After much thought and observation, I'm pretty sure that the problem is that he is JUST LIKE ME. Friends, the child ORGANIZED his Halloween candy before he would eat any of it:

EVERY morning, Garrett wants two pancakes, cut up, with syrup on top. At lunch, it must be ham and cheese with mayo, cut in squares. ONLY SQUARES. And he starts every day with an ambitious plan, such as building a replica of Noah's Ark (I'm SO not kidding), or baking and decorating a six-tiered cake. He not only has the ideas, he literally has PLANS. Like, drawn on paper, rolled up plans that are presented to me at six in the morning. I blame this little tendency on his father, the engineer.

And the moment he realizes that we probably won't be able to follow through with building a 600 foot boat by 7 a.m.? ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE. Whining, screaming, tantrums, yelling, stomping, the WORKS.

The truly frightening part for me is that for all of his out of control fits, he can go from zero to sixty in five seconds flat. One minute, I am tearing my hair out over his drama, and the next minute, he is bringing the lunch dishes from the table and sweeping the crumbs from the floor, just to be helpful. He has inherited my insanity.

I myself have a tendency to be floating on air one moment, and in the depths of despair an hour later, and I hate seeing this quality in Garrett. I want his childhood to be a little more happy-go-lucky, you know? Last month, after reading his first little book ever ("Mat sat. Mat has a cat."), he ran off to his room to get his Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs, all set to read it himself. You can imagine what happened when he realized he couldn't read it yet.

So now that you understand a little better what I'm up against, let me just tell you some things he's done to occupy his time lately...

1. After picking up Laura from preschool one day last week, I came in the house, leaving the garage door open, let the kids off to their room to play, and sat down to feed Delaney. After about five minutes, I noticed it was way too quiet. I yelled for G and L and got no response. I looked in the backyard. Nobody there. I threw open the kitchen door that opens to the garage and saw Garrett running down the middle of the street. Enough said. Everyone is fine, and MOM, IF YOU'RE READING THIS, IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. CALM DOWN. AND ALSO, IF YOU WANT TO KEEP THE CHILDREN NEXT WEEKEND, IT WOULD ENSURE THEIR SURVIVAL THROUGH THIS WEEK, AT LEAST.

2. After finding some nails that I had been hanging pictures with, Garrett decided to use his toy hammer to pound some nails into the bathroom wall. He hung some doll house furniture. Upon getting busted by me, he begged me not to tell Daddy, and said he would remove the nails with his toy pliers.

3. Several months ago, the kids cut up my kitchen window screens. We removed them, with the intention of repairing them soon. So the other day, I walk into the kitchen and see G and L have rolled open the screen-less windows and are throwing all kinds of shit out onto the concrete patio. Seth fixed the screens this weekend, so now no CHILDREN can be thrown out the window.

4. Kiddie pool + hose + bottle of green paint = fun!

5. He busted the leg off of a bar chair, which is now $100 in the trash.

6. The stuffed animals had a lovely bath in my bathtub.

7. Garrett spent the better part of Saturday morning making pictures of ghosts and spiders with the words "Boo" all over them, and taping them up to doors and my bathroom mirror. He was mad at me because "I always send him to his room", and he wanted to "scare me away so I'd leave the house forever". Wouldn't a normal child be watching cartoons on Saturday morning?

8. And to cap off the week, see the pictures below of Garrett's Opus Magnum, his Piece de Resistance. I will say no more. The pics will be enough, trust me. I will post cute Halloween pics another day, after I have calmed down.

BEFORE:

AFTER: