Boys Will Be Boys and Boys and Their Toys

It never ceases to amaze me what dangerous ideas my children come up with in the name of entertainment. Coming from a family of three girls, there was a lot of screaming, throwing, and door slamming but the most hard-core physical thing we ever did was hold my littlest sister down while one of us sat on her face and pretended to pass gas.

By nature, I am a cautious person. So much that my husband has nicknamed me "The OSHA Inspector" because I am always pointing situations that may (if one out of the millions of possible scenarios play out) be dangerous. But I find that as a result of raising two small boys, I am increasingly becoming desensitized.

For example, tonight's after dinner show started when the boys figured out that they could coast down the hill of our driveway (with no hands, Mom!) on a teeny tiny tractor bed made to hitch to a Little Tykes tractor. I was on the phone with a friend when I looked out my back window to see Drew (once again supposedly under Dad's "supervision") careening down the driveway on a tractor bed made for toy farm animals. Cade, not to be outdone and tired of waiting for his turn on the tractor for weeble livestock, drug out the toddler motorcycle from the garage and launched himself from the top of the driveway. Backwards.

Dad's solution to these antics: Move the van. AFTER Drew went sailing into it. Never mind the fact that they are still doing these stunts without helmets, which I am going out to purchase TOMORROW.

This is only the latest in a long string of antics that never would have even occurred to my sisters and me, such as:

• Deep sea diving off the side of my garden tub
• Bungee jumping off the back of the sofa with the microphone (attached to the tape player by a coiled cord)
  
• Taking the slide face first (Cade's preferred method since he first hit the slides at 9 months)
• Getting a running start to launch themselves into the pool
• Chasing each other around the dining room table. The one next to my china cabinet.
• Standing up on the bed so they can take turns shoving each other off
• "Surfing" the toddler rocking chair by balancing one leg on each arm of the chair
• Dismounting the sofa by jumping off the arms as opposed to just standing up like a normal person
  

This does not include the more tame activities they undertake, such as:

• Making "book stew" by dumping every book on the bookshelf onto the bedroom floor. Every night after lights out. To the extent that the books were moved into another room.
• Sailing matchbox cars down the stairs
• Finger painting their bodies instead of paper - every day is Game Day at the Fox house!
• Coloring on the side of the house. Another activity that occurred under Dad's watchful eye but we won't go there.
• "Operating" on every toy we own that runs on batteries, including some non-toys such as TV remotes, DVD players, etc.
  

Naturally, we constantly discourage these activities but we still feel like we are raising a couple of mentally ill chimpanzees instead of small boys. Which brings me to their room. It is now officially as barren as a prison cell, containing only the bed, a dresser (which I am bolting to the wall) and the waste basket. Why, you ask? Because every night after we lovingly read them stories and tuck them in, they take turns launching off the bed into the giant slippery pile of books, playing cards, and View Finder films they have dumped onto the floor. Despite making them clean up (Mommy is not a morning person and the "Clean Up" song is a particularly annoying way to start the day) they kept at it so we simply removed the toys. All sounds quiet now, but it's too early to be sure - I'm on the lookout for small boys wandering the halls with waste baskets over their heads.