maybe I should try torture tactics instead of time outs

I woke up to find that Gabe had figured out how to open the child locks on his closet door and he removed everything from his shelves, including all his markers and crayons, with which he drew on the walls and furniture. He also tore up papers in his closet, threw around stickers, destroyed flashcards, and distributed my boxed up pictures around his room.

An hour later, I left him alone for 3 minutes while I ran Josie up to her crib for naptime. He figured out how to open the gate leading down to the basement and tore everything off the shelves down there, including opening up board games and tossing Monopoly money and houses around the room.

All of this right before our scheduled house showing at 11:30am, so I almost had a nervous breakdown at the second incident. Gabe ended up sitting in time out for 30 minutes until it was time to leave, because I couldn't possibly live through another mess while I was trying frantically to clean up.

Then while we were driving over to the park where we played yesterday because I wanted to try to find the shoes he THREW OUT THE CAR WINDOW yesterday afternoon, I had to take away all of Gabe's car toys because he kept flinging them at his sister. Then I had to remove anything accessible from the car seat because he was picking those things up and throwing them across the car at her. He even took off his SHOES and threw them at her. Of course, Josie thinks all of this is hilarious and cracks up and eggs him on the whole time, so he thinks he is being oh so funny.

For the rest of the morning I felt like a prison guard at Guantanamo Bay. Every time we got in the car, I'd remove everything around him and even remove his shoes. At one point he asked nicely for a toy and I thought the message had been adequately delivered so I let him hold the toy, but in the time it took me to close his door and open mine, he'd already thrown it at her.

The terrible behavior continued throughout the day, with tons of whining and throwing of toys and food and not listening and not following directions. By the time I strapped him down for his nap, I was ready to sell both kids on Ebay with no reserve price.

BUT, the best was yet to come.

After his nap we headed over to the drug store to pick up a prescription and they were taking forever to find it. In the meantime, Gabe was opening and slamming the cooler doors, throwing the greeting cards around, running and hiding behind display cases, and generally pushing me over the edge. I turned my back for 30 seconds to talk to the pharmacist yet AGAIN about the prescription and suddenly, I heard a bloodcurdling scream behind me. A bloodcurdling scream I recognized as belonging to my own child.

I turned around to find that Gabe's head was stuck inside a life-sized M&M.

A life-sized, plastic, bright yellow M&M, with my child attached at the neck.

Every customer and employee in the store seemed to materialize out of nothing in response to the insane screaming from this lunatic child, and I swear I thought about leaving him there for just a second. Just a teensy tiny split second, though, before I rushed to his aid to dismantle the giant M&M with the help of employees. Finally we were able to extricate his head from the jaws of the M&M, with resulting welts all over his face where he wedged himself in.

The irony, of course, is that my prescription was for birth control. Which is probably why they were so frantically trying to help me fill it, because every pharmacist behind that counter realized that this woman REALLY NEEDS A FUCKING BREAK ON THE GESTATING FRONT. Thank you.