Lessons in Baby Proofing

You know how when you go to someone else's house with you child, you have the talk on the way there about how we are going to behave, leave the host or hostesses items alone, stay out of their food and flush the toilet after you've finished?! Yah, well, we do that! It's sort of like liability for us in a way, I mean if we've told him to do all of these things, he's going to listen, right?!

Yah, that was not the case yesterday! My brother Tony and his wife Traci, are having a baby in April. She has been busy getting the baby's room ready and had asked me to help her with some painting so Jaxon and I went over after lunch. He loves going to their house and asks several times a week if we can go visit so I knew he'd be really excited when I told him where we were headed. He had his backpack all packed w/ toys, movies and snacks to occupy his time while there.

Upon first arriving, he immediately headed to their workout/game room. My brother collects John Deere toy tractors and has a box full of them, (for awhile he stored this box in the closet of this particular room). I was in the baby's room getting things ready to start taping for Traci's paint project when I heard Traci ask Jaxon to show her where it was. Where what was? I went down the hall to find that Jaxon, (who was so busy looking for those toys that he forgot to get to the toilet), had peed on her carpet! I was mortified! Not only had he done this, but I had no change of clothes! AND I was going to have to try and make sure he stayed off the furniture!

We got the pee cleaned up, got Jaxon off the couch (yes, he climbed up when I wasn't looking) and got back to work. A little while later I went out in the living room to see what he was up to and he had opened a tin of popcorn! He had popcorn strung from one end of the house to the other. And as I walked into the kitchen to throw some candy wrapper trash away, I discovered that he had been in the fridge... and had left the door hanging wide open! Again, totally embarrassed!

I started a movie for him at that point and for awhile we were able to get some work done w/ of course a thousand interruptions, but hey, he was doing pretty good and at least I knew he wasn't making another mess, right?! WRONG! (And I should probably admit here that when my child is quiet and I haven't heard from him in less than about 2 minutes, that is a red flag! That is when I go and check to make sure he isn't doing something that he shouldn't!) I guess we were just so busy and actually accomplishing something that I didn't even think to check on him. For a split second, I thought that maybe he'd fallen asleep... what was I thinking?!

We were just finishing up when I told Traci that I thought I better check on him, after all, it's been a little while since he'd checked in last. I walked out into the living room and what I saw made me want to cry and laugh all at the same time! Jaxon had found a jar of Spackle... he was painting a picture with the Spackle on the carpet!!!

So let's review shall we?! He has peed on her carpet in the game room, thrown popcorn all over their living room, left the fridge door wide open for who knows how long, not thrown any of his Valentine's Day candy wrapper trash away, taken a notepad from his backpack and tore all of the pages apart, decided to do some Yoga in the kitchen w/ Traci's Yoga Mat and finally, spackeled their living room carpet! (God must have been getting a really good laugh about all of this!)

Needless to say, we ended our day w/ myself and my (7 months pregnant) sister-in-law on our hands and knees scrubbing the carpet. Do you now see why we have the "we are going to someone else's house" talk?! Sorry Traci! I was really hoping that you wouldn't of had to learn the art of Baby Proofing from your nephew!