The Painter & The Dare Devil

Audrey is a painter....those who are parents know what this means. For those of you who do not know the joys of parenthood I'll tell you a little about it. A painter is a child who likes to touch poop and smear it everywhere. Need i say more? Some of you I've told about this...and some of you I have not...because, frankly, it's a little embarrassing and really really gross.

In the last 6 months, it's happened maybe once or twice, she pooped in the tub and smeared it around. It was nasty and took a very long time to clean and disinfect but not too big of a deal. I figured it was our fault for walking away for a few minutes. Last week it happened not once...not twice...but three times in her bed. While "napping" she took her diaper off and had fun. The first time was horrible. And I mean horrible. It was about 3 o'clock and i get a call from Patrick saying "help." So i ran home to help clean it up. It was all over the crib, all over the wall, and all over the boxes next to the bed. don't even get me started about the smell. I did not finish cleaning up til about 4:30. Yes, 4:30. I called the office and told them i wasn't coming back in. The next time we caught her in the early stages of the act and it took about 15 minutes to clean. After that patrick decided that taping the diaper with duck tape would help solve the problem. Nope. She wiggled her way out of the diaper again. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I took her sleeper pajamas...

here is a picture in case you don't know what i am talking about.

...and I cut the toes off. Yes, cut them off. She now sleeps in a backward sleeper. I have pictures. It's pretty funny.

She sleeps in it at night and for her nap. unless she figures out how to unzip the zipper on her back i don't think we will have painting problems for a while. Oh, and about the tub. We no longer let her just slash around for long periods of time. I wash her hair and body, she gets about 10 minutes of play time, and then it's out of the tub. Hopefully this new trend will help stop the tub painting.

The second part of this post is about our dare devil.

I think it was on monday this happened. I'll have to ask patrick for sure.

Lately audrey has had a very very bad habit of not taking a nap. She'll just jump and play for 2 hours in her bed. On monday, I'm just going to say it was on monday, Patrick is in the living room working on homework. Audrey was in her room "napping" aka playing with her animals. The funny thing about her is most of the time, once in a while she will scream the entire 2 hours, she'll play happily in her bed. On Monday it was not one of those times. She was screaming and yelling and asking for help for about 45 minutes. And then she fell silent. Assuming she gave up and went to bed, patrick just kept working on homework. A few minutes later he hears this knocking. It's not coming from the front door or the back. It sounded like it was someone knocking on a neighbors door. But after a few minutes of a constent knock patrick realizes it's coming from the apartment. Audrey's room to be exact. He then just assumes she playing with the wall. then her hears a fant "Daddy, daddy, Daddy" and realizes it's not the wall but the door.
And sure enough the dare devil had climbed out of bed.

But she had some aid. The rocking chair was next to the crib. She propped her self up and used the arm rest to help her escape. We've pulled the chair away from the crib. But i'm assuming she'll try it again very very soon. I say that if she does climb out it's time to get her a big girl bed. I'll let you know if that happens.

I just wanted to let you know about some things that she is doing.

I'll get pictures of the sleepers up as soon as i can.

Love,
Elizabeth, Patrick and Dare devil.