Whitney and Heidi share a bedroom. And when I say ‘share,’ I mean occasionally when Whitney’s feeling extra generous, she allows Heidi to *look* at the toys...the one’s they ‘share.’ So referring to it as ‘sharing’ might be playing it a little fast and loose. However, the one thing they do ‘share’ in their bedroom is their thirst to destroy it. I don’t mean burning it to ground kind of ‘destroying,’ think more Kate Moss' and Lindsay Lohan’s shared penthouse suite the morning after a night of drunken debauchery.
Ben and I redecorated their room a couple months back. We painted their walls and purchased matching duvet covers. And for the love of all things holy, I will not have those duvet covers defiled by hair detangler and Desitin!
But it’s not just the fabric stains I’m talking about; it’s the utter and vast devastation visable as far as the eye can see across the landscape of their room. Stuffed animals, my high heels, wooden train tracks and the occasional errant sippy cup are amassed in piles. Mountains of books and valleys of dress-up clothes cover the floor.
I’ll clean the room and within a few days it looks as though as a couple of hoarders moved in, took one look, and were like... “I see adding some bold vertical stripes here on this wall and a steep pile of Barbie legs and broken Playmobil pieces against that wall. This place has potential!”
So, I finally came up with a threat plan to keep the room a little more orderly. From now on, any toys or debris left on the floor or any other random surfaces will be confiscated for one week. Based on their shrieks and screams, I think they heard something more like, ‘I’m going to feed your dress-up purses to the monster who lives under your beds.’
Whatever they thought, WHO CARES! It was working! And then on day four of ‘clean living,’ I heard screams coming from their room. I didn’t hear them at first. I no longer hear noises of displeasure. After twelve years of parenting, moaning noises are the soundtrack of my life. A polar bear could lift a school bus off it’s front axles, and I wouldn’t hear those kids screaming. Don’t scream if you want my attention just tell me you’ve unloaded the dishwasher. But then the screams became more urgent, and I figured they’d spotted a spider or the monster who lives under their beds.
I opened their bedroom door and there was Whitney sitting on top of the dresser, which was now tipping forward at a forty-five degree angle. All the drawers had slid forward, but safety guards had kept them from falling out. Luckily the bottom drawer had slid out enough to keep the dresser from tipping all the way forward.
Whitney was scrabbling to keep herself and a ten pound marble lamp from sliding off. The very lamp I had ingeniously placed there for maximum injury, should the dresser ever topple over.
And then I see Heidi. She’s standing in front of the tilting dresser of death, arms outstretched as though she’s trying to push a bolder off the edge of a cliff. She’s grunts, “I help mama!!! I help!!!” Immediately I jumped in front of the dresser, wrapped one arm around the marble lamp and my other arm around Whitney. Then I used my hip to tip the dresser back into it’s upright position.
Once everything was back in place, and I was confident my risk of stroke had returned to normal levels, I turned to Whitney and waggled my finger at her. I just a waggled at her for a moment until I could compose my thoughts. Because, what I wanted to do was squeeze them both into a big snuggly, bunny hug. But I knew I had to make this a learning moment.
To harness the terror.
So before I could break into sobs of, ‘Thank god you didn’t pinch your fingers...or BREAK YOUR SPINES!’ I looked Whitney in the eyes and told her that she may never... ever...climb on top of that dresser again. EVER, EVER!
She stared back at me, her jaw slack and then in the most incredulous manner shouted back, “You? You’re mad at ME?!” [She fell short of saying: Me? You mean me...the victim of a furniture attack?]
But, I want you to know, there wasn’t a single toy out of place in that room.
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