Fragile

When we bought the furnishings for our house I wish someone had said: “Oh hey, by the way?  Don’t buy nice stuff.  Your future kids will just break it all.”

When you’re newlyweds you don’t think about these things. 

So, you go ahead and register for the Tiffany’s picture frames and the Kate Spade vases.  Take it from me, those vases will get dusty waiting for the flowers that you never have the time or money to buy…but don’t fret…you’ll use the frames.  They can hold the pictures of what your house used to look like before your demon children came along and ruined everything they touched.

All kids break things.  Usually just out of curiosity though. 

I think it goes without saying, however, that breaking things in interesting ways is a specialty of Carter’s.  It’s just Murphy’s Law in action.  How does that go again?  Anything that can go wrong…will be because of Carter?  Something like that.

Did you know that a very inventive way to use egg beaters is to bang them against the woodwork in your parent’s house?  Not only does it make lovely music, but it also leaves THE BEST ding marks.  And YOU thought they were just for beating eggs and hitting your brother over the head with!  No, no, my friend.  You were mistaken!

Carter uses his toys as weapons of mass destruction as well. We were playing with his bowling set one day and he said "Auntie Jen got me this! It was a present and it's so cool!"

It was really cute....until he threw the bowling ball at a window and cracked it. Then it was less cute.

I really hated looking at that crack.  But don’t you worry; I really didn’t have to deal with it for long.  A couple months after the bowling ball incident he threw my video camera through that same window and just shattered it completely.  What a doll, huh? (Oh, and if anyone is looking for something to get me for my birthday…I need a new video camera, too.)

I would have to say by far the most expensive thing he’s broken is the dog.  Ok, all you animal lovers out there, no animals were injured during the making of this blog!  Well, I mean...actually, one was.  ‘Cause that’s the point of the story. 

This is what happened: Carter threw his sippy cup off his tray when he was done with it and it hit our dog smack in the eye.  After $900 worth of vet bills they told us…”Eh…he’ll be blind.  There’s nothing you can do about it.”  Oh, super!

Well, turns out they were wrong.  That dog is just fine, nothing is wrong with his sight.  So Carter didn’t blind his dog after all.  But we still had to pay the damn vet bill so I fully intend to use that story against him some time in the future. 

“Remember the time you blinded your dog because you were misbehaving?  Do you want that to happen again?  CLEAN YOUR ROOM OR THE DOG WILL GO BLIND AGAIN!”

I’ll have to work on how those two things are related, but I’m confident that I can come up with something that will scare him into compliance.

The one positive thing about having kids that break things is that if YOU break something you can blame it on them. 

“No honey, it was Carter who spilled scented oil air freshener all over the woodwork and left a huge stain…that you now have to fix.  Kids, right?”

I’m still trying to find a way to blame Carter for the time I sideswiped a huge truck while attempting to sneak by it and smashed in my side mirror.

Mike, you don’t read my blog right?