SO really...

I need some suggestions! WHAT DO I DO WITH THE CABINETS? Anybody hear of a humane shackling system for 2 year old twix? Anybody put a pole in the living room to attach their twix to? I'm at a total loss here folks.

Yesterday, from 9:30 to 10:45 I was making all the necessary phone calls to move (OK not all, but I made 4 of them). Then Alex came screaming into the office, "Mommy! Mommy! There's an emergency. You have to hurry! I'm not kidding! This isn't a pretend emergency (we go through this a lot in the Devlin house)! This is a REAL emergency!"

So I am flying up the stairs, I look past RyGuy filling the dump truck with chocolate syrup. I look past Andrew lining up ice cream bars on the carpet (these poor peeps buying this place need to give up on saving this carpet and just rip it out). I look to the kitchen, to Seany standing on the oven drawer to the climb to the counter to climb up the refrigerator to reach the playing card on top.

After assessing (2-3 seconds tops) the various situations, I ask Alex, "WHAT is the emergency?"

"Ryan is filling his dump truck with chocolate syrup! Andrew is eating SIX ice cream bars! Sean is climbing in the kitchen!" Alex shrieks out at me as though I should have obviously known.

Here's the thing, to me none of that is an emergency (OK the climbing on the oven is). This is just what my life is. If I have to say make phone calls then I know I will face this kind of bedlam when I finish. If I don't make the phone calls, who will make them? Mark is supposed to work when he's at work, not take care of our family stuff.

An emergency to me is like last week, when Ryan drank a bottle of children's ibuprofen and I had to call poison control. I keep it in a cabinet next to the sink. He got to it by climbing up the cabinets and standing on the counter and reaching up (it have to be on tip toes because he's short) into the medicine shelf. FYI, the poison control guys advice, "Well, don't give him any more if he starts acting sick." Yeah its the 'if' that's wrong with that advice.

While I was cleaning up all of this, they went downstairs and emptied comet all over the basement floor. That is when I flipped out -- poisonous substance Mark had left in reach of the twix. The adults in my life HAVE to cooperate with my wishes regarding keeping things out of reach. I am the one stuck managing this nut house everyday.