Violet was born a bit over two years ago. I've barely had the chance to sit down since then. Unless she's sleeping, she is a danger to herself and others. She looks so benign, doesn't she? Almost angelic...
My first 2 girls have been (and still are) admittedly easy to raise. They are basically compliant. They don't fight or argue. They don't hit. Even as toddlers, they didn't scream bloody murder or throw tantrums. What Violet does, on a daily basis, generally equates to what the other two girls have ever done. She is what my mom would call "turbo naughty".
Once, after her bath, she covered her entire head with Vaseline, resulting in a 2 week quest for the shampoo that would de-grease her head. We finally just had to use Dawn dish liquid. Finally, after two shampoos with Dawn and a followup with Johnson's baby soap, her hair was clean again.
Just today, for example, she has been up to these types of mischief:
1) She took a DVD into the bathroom and had coated it entirely with hand soap before I found them both.
2) I threw away a two week old piece of Austin's graduation cake this morning. While I disposed of it, I explained to both the younger kids that it was "yucky" now and that they were not to touch the cake. They both agreed. About an hour later, she wandered into the bedroom where I was cleaning, and her hands and face were covered in blue frosting. I took her into the kitchen where I found that she had scouted out a discarded plastic fork from the night before (also in the trash), and that she had used it to eat nearly the entire piece of old cake. Now, when she sits down to eat at the dinner table, we have to continually remind her to use her fork. I submit to you that she worked to find a fork in the trash with which she could eat other trash. At least she is unlikely to ever go hungry, as long as there is a garbage can to be found.
3) She went out to the garage with the other kids. A few minutes later, Austin came in to tell me that she was sitting on the garage steps eating an ice cream cone and that she had the whole box on the stairs with her and that she had left the outside freezer door standing open (for how long, we don't know).
4) As I was making the salad for supper, she took the onion I was using, separated all the rings, and put some on each person's plate... then put the rest of it in the trash.
5) After her bath, she went outside in the garage again. Mark went outside to find her, and he couldn't. He called for her and started walking down our very long driveway only to find her halfway down the long drive, walking away from the house, in her PJ's and her big sister's crocs.
6) When she came back inside she decided she wanted a drink and another piece of garlic bread from supper. She brought the bag of bread over to me, and I told her we were done eating for the night. A minute later, I turned around to find her standing on the bag of garlic bread. So I guess her motto is, "If you can't eat it, stand on it."
7) Somehow, in the midst of my vacuuming our bedroom floor, she found her way to the outside sill of the door that leads from the bedroom to the deck. She scooped out handfuls of dead box elder bugs from the sill and into our bedroom floor - sprinkling them far and wide. I'm not sure when it happened or how I didn't notice till I went into the bedroom later this evening.
These, mind you, are the things from this day that I actually remember or discover. It's these types of things that remind me when I used to hear mothers say, "It's when they're being quiet that you know they're up to something." Ugh... I used to not understand - in the practical sense - what that meant. I miss those days. Now, I not only understand it, it comprises my entire life. In fact, I know that if I'm choosing to enjoy 5 minutes of peace and quiet in the kitchen or bathroom or weeding the garden or somewhere without her present, that she is most definitely doing something that is going to drive me crazy when I discover it. However, it's not just when she's quiet that she's finding mischief.
These things don't even touch the dozens of times each day I am called by the other kids because she's hitting or jumping on or off furniture or filling her cup from a pitcher on the counter (or rather dumping it on the floor). What about when she's licking the windows or taking food without asking or feeding her food to the dogs or pulling drawers completely out of the refrigerator or torturing pets or coloring in (or tearing pages out of) reading books. (She is also my first book-defacer).
Tonight at supper one of the kids commented that Violet looks like "Goldilocks". Another one of them said, "Yeah, but she doesn't act like her." There was silence at the table. Then, one of them said, "But Goldilocks did go into a house without asking." And another one piped up, "And then she ate someone else's food...And then she broke their chair." Then another one said, "And then she messed up their made beds and took a nap till she got caught." More silence followed... then a giggle and another giggle... before we knew it, the whole table of us were laughing (including "Goldilocks"). Levi said, "She is like Goldilocks!"
Now I'm off to vacuum up some bugs before bed. Tomorrow comes too early.
