You think you have everything baby-proofed? Think again.

We now have a nightly ritual. Lock every cabinet, lock every door, turn on door alarms. We run through it like a space shuttle launch countdown. “Front door locked?” “Check.” “Cabinets in the kitchen locked?” “Check” “Sharp objects hidden?” ” Check.”

Just when you think you’ve got it down, they come up with a new way to make you realize you’ve underestimated them. It would be funnier if I didn’t have to spend my morning directing the clean-up efforts. So what did they get into today?

They scooped out a handful of butter from the butter dish. You can see the tiny-fingered scoop marks. They ripped apart a loaf of bread and scattered its contents across the entirety of the house. No couch, blanket, toy bin or crevasse was spared. She even had bread crumbs in her underwear. They found the food dye. They. Found. The. Food. Dye. They opened the microwave, just to prove to me that nowhere is safe (it’s where we’ve been hiding things from them). The bathroom looks like a tree on homecoming weekend. There are tiny football helmets hidden around the living room like Easter eggs. Popsicle sticks are strewn about like leaves in the fall. The dirty laundry is mixed in with the clean laundry. And there’s still frosting in the carpet from yesterday that I need to wash out (I scrubbed and vacuumed, but it’s really in there) – and the frosting is a whole ‘nother story that I don’t have the emotional fortitude to get into right now. In retrospect, I can see that I practically gave them those things by leaving them within reach, but you don’t know what they can do until they do it I guess.

Oh, and they accomplished all that in only 30 minutes.

My morning will be spent making them clean it all up. My afternoon will be spent childproofing the upper half of the kitchen. I need to clean off the top of the fridge so we can use it as our new “save zone,” as that might be the only place left that they can’t reach (yet). Wish me luck (and patience).