Arms Race

My boys are giving me a run for my money. It seems they are always one step ahead of me. My dad compared this to rival countries- one developing bigger and better weaponry, the other developing counter measures to protect against said weaponry. I think the analogy is apt. I never know what is going to come out of the arsenal of Gabe and Elijah.
The serious naughtiness began on our trip to Baltimore and has continued for a week and a half now. While in Baltimore, we invited ourselves to stay at the home of Finbar Foley- a good friend from medical school- who risked his home and sanity in allowing us to stay there. He was away in New York when we arrived but had arranged for us to get a key to the house. We let ourselves in and started unloading the van. We couldn't have been there for more than five minutes when Elijah located a bathroom, opened the door, opened the cupboard under the sink, found a can of Ajax and sprinkled it all over the upstairs carpet. I had to text Finn, who was getting ready to sing in a concert, to ask him where the vacuum cleaner was. Meanwhile, Gabe had emptied a shelf of medical texts and other books and was happily perusing a Guide to Embryology amidst a large stack of books he had relocated to one of the guest beds.
While staying at Finn's house they also opened a package of crackers and crumbled them all over the bedroom, took all of the mats off the stairs, removed a piece of trim, put fingerprints on every reachable glass surface and tried to break Finn's Wii.
The fun continued after returning home. Gabriel awoke from his nap one day suddenly able to open and/or remove all of the child-proof doorknob covers. While I was using the bathroom downstairs, Gabe and Elijah raided the upstairs bathroom and threw literally everything into the bathtub. They emptied drawers, cleaned off the sink and threw in the toilet paper rolls not to mention the toilet plunger. I tried to put them in time out, but of course they could now leave the room at will. I sat in a chair in front of the door, but the door opens into the room so I ended up playing goalie which they thought was hilarious.
Marc had a really hard time keeping them in bed that night while I was at rehearsal. I returned home to find a web of yarn tying their bedroom doorknob to several other doors and a light fixture. Apparently, this was the fourth attempt at tying them in.
Thankfully, our friend Jim Messegee came over on Saturday and helped us install hook and eyes on every door in the house using the patented (or at least it should be) Jim Messegee friction locking system so that the boys can't just climb on a chair and pop the hook out. I thought our troubles were over but they still had tricks up their sleeves. In retribution for locking them in their room at night, they decided to pull their sliding closet doors out of alignment (Marc was able to fix them- thank goodness) and then quite literally topped themselves by getting into the garage and climbing all the way to the top of the minivan. We had eaten lunch outside and I went inside to put the dishes in the sink. When I returned, they were both jumping up and down on top of the luggage rack saying "Mommy- I on car!"
Presently, I am sitting on our porch typing this while the masters of mayhem are chucking various outdoor toys over the fence and attempting to climb over the fence to get them. The scary thing is, they can almost do it. I'm going to have to speak with my research and development team and get them working on a counter measure for the Fence Climber 2010.