Mom flew over the cuckoo's nest.

Have you ever gone crazy and then come out the other side? I think I might be there. We have reached a level of absurdity in our home that no longer warrants anger or discipline, just helpless laughter and hyperbolic threats of decapitations and trips to the black market to look for potential new parents for our heathens. Want to know what happened last night to round out our lovely Thanksgiving?

That's Ethan, covered in Cetaphil. Granted, something like this happened months ago but it was not quite to this scale and I was certain we had put it all behind us. However, I ventured upstairs to check on the kids last night and saw Ben crouching behind the rocking chair, squishing the lotion in his hands and attempting to hide the fact that he had an ample amount of the stuff worked into his hair. Silly me, I thought that was the extent of it. And then I stepped further into the room and got a glimpse of Ethan. I was at a loss. I mutely took the jar of Cetaphil out of his hands and went downstairs to 1) grab the camera and 2) inform Clyde that his kids needed him. Drama ensued along with a hose-down and a load of laundry.

Grabbing the camera speaks to the fact that I just might have given up. I am aware that swift discipline was the appropriate response but I don't think I see the point anymore. This is just going to keep happening and it's going to keep escalating as my kids get more and more creative. Not all that long ago, this is what awaited me one seemingly quiet evening when I allowed the boys to play together before going to sleep:

They don't get to play together unsupervised in their room anymore. I know, I know... I brought this on myself. And then there's what happened to our new keyboard when I was making the kids their dinner.

There's also the crayon drawings on various surfaces, the big hole in our living room wall (yes, the kids did it but I doubt they would have accomplished it if our walls weren't actually made from a material as crumbly as shortbread), the Sharpie tiger stripes that Ben drew on himself and the incident that continues to live in my nightmares although it happened over a year ago. Ben "decorated" the walls in their room with his own feces. Yeah. I had to call some friends over to supervise the kids while I cleaned the horrifying mess. Actually, I believe my exact words on the phone to them were "please come over and keep me from killing my oldest son".

Time has passed. Both kids are alive and healthy. Something has happened to me, though. I have entered a state of bemused hopelessness. I will keep my children from killing themselves and each other but the rest is just so much extraneous fluff. I briefly considered cleaning the house today but that can wait til the kids move out. If I've gotten them to that point, I haven't completely failed.