Isn’t it so funny how two little girls from the same two parents, with the same genes, and the same upbringing and history, can be so very different? Today Baby A went to MDO at First Christian Church, which is a drop-in program, because this overworked, underpaid mom was needin’ a BREAK.

So, I go to pick her up at 2:30, and the teacher tells me, “Ummm…*Baby A* was in the Naughty Crew today, that did NOT take a nap, and kept getting up and keeping each other up during nap time today.” I could tell by the wispy hair flying in all directions (the teacher’s, not Baby A’s), and the frazzled, time-worn look on her face, that it had indeed been quite a day in the Two-Year-Old room, and the teacher was not too happy about it.

It wasn’t that I didn’t care or didn’t support this poor weary teacher, but I had to laugh. Those words were so completely foreign to my ears!! One of MY children…..the NAUGHTY kid??? Do you THINK that ONCE, in Big Sister’s 6 1/2 year history, that ANY teacher, be it MDO, Sunday School, Dance, etc., etc., EVER said that KB was “naughty” that day??? What in the world??

All I could say was, “Gosh, I’m so surprised she didn’t take a nap, because she did NOT sleep last night, at ALL!” Suddenly, as I remembered last night’s bedtime circus, it became clear to me what exactly this teacher had gone through this afternoon.

See, my two girls have really started to like sleeping in each other’s room at night, so I set up Baby A’s playpen in Big Sis’s room, and she sleeps in there.

Only last night, Baby A learned how to scale that playpen wall and escape, “unbeknownst” to mom and dad downstairs. (So she thinks).

So last night during American Idol, with my two angelic little ones safely tucked into their beds last night, we start hearing this BOOM ~ BANG ~ CRASH coming from upstairs. It certainly wasn’t Big Sis, are you kidding?……she was doing as all the perfectly behaved First Born children were doing, laying in bed quietly, because That’s What You’re Supposed To Do, when you’re the first-born child who follows all the rules.

I go upstairs to find…..

What DO you do in the middle of the night, when you’re two, and you’re feeling free and powerful?? You sit in Sissy’s closet and try on shoes and headbands. Hence the booming and crashing….she was pulling all the shoes out of the shoe organizer.

I mean, isn’t THIS Paradise? All of these fabulous SHOES? Worth climbing out of bed for, risking possible *Biblical Chastisement* for?? Well absolutely…..

….because no less than FOUR times last night, she climbed out and made a beeline to the shoes and the headbands. Four times!!





Granted, I probably did not handle it in the Michael Pearl Approved Method of Child Training (and I do love you, Michael Pearl), because I laughed. All four times. Then I got out the camera and the circus just spiraled out of control from there.

KB had to have just a *tiny* taste of what its like to be “bad.” She’s living on the edge…..

How do you teach THIS kid a lesson?

Luckily for her, “Cute” goes a LOOOOONG way. And so funny how she knows that. That’s even a verse in Proverbs, “A cute grin turns away wrath.” (Well, I may be paraphrasing that quite a bit.)

So just when I thought I had a pretty good handle on this Parenting thing, along comes The Naughty Crew to cause me to doubt my superb parenting skills. And I’m completely at a loss for how to handle it. Any of you fellow Naughty Crew moms, help, please……..
The upside to last night’s Midnight Circus? Tonight, two little angels were out like lights by 7 pm tonight. In two separate bedrooms, I might add. Lesson learned.