Never Trust a Silent Child

Kids make some disturbing noises. They whine, they cry, they yell when you incorrectly peel their string cheese. Our 4-month-old daughter screams like a wild, red-faced dinosaur while strapped in her car seat during stop-and-go traffic. But the ultimate WORST sound that should make every parent freeze in terror is the sound of silence. A silent kid in the next room is like the quiet before the storm. You find yourself enjoying a moment of peace and quiet. Perhaps you think to yourself, "Wow, my kid is playing so well in the other room...maybe I'll sleep in a little longer." But then it slowly dawns on you that your kid has been a little too quiet for too long, and you just know that something horrible has happened. Guaranteed, you are about to discover a colossal magnitude-10 disaster of some kind. Here is a list of things we have found our kid doing quietly in the next room while we weren't looking.*

1. Pulling flowers apart, and scattering petals and pollen all over the house.
2. Peeing on the carpet.
3. Pooping on the carpet.
4. Creating "art" on furniture, books, and walls with a permanent pen.
5. Smashing a younger sibling, claiming that he was just "trying to be a limousine" with her. Your guess is as good as mine.
6. Throwing objects out of a 3-story window.
7. Flushing a roll of new toilet paper down the toilet.
8. Sticking objects into electrical sockets.
9. Eating popcorn off the Christmas tree.
10. Dumping out fifty-billion-piece board games.
11. Finding a bag of Oreos, pouring all of it on the floor, and consuming half the cookies.
12. Digging through off-limit closets/drawers/cabinets.
13. Opening a "childproof" bottle of medication, and ingesting pills. And that is why we have Poison Control on speed dial.
14. Playing dress up with every single bra and underwear I own.
15. Slipping valuable objects into a tiny little crevice between the wall and sink known as the "Black Hole." Those objects are lost forever.
16. Stamping our return address all over the desk and computer.

* Keep in mind that our child is 3 1/2 years old. Which means that we've only experienced the tip of the iceberg of destruction potential. Does anyone sell "my-kid-ruined-all-my-stuff" insurance?