sheesh.

My kids are killing me! Slowly, but surely, they are killing me. Well, to be fair - Rhys and Oliver, together, on their worst days are half the challenge of Charlie on a typical day. I'm flummoxed.

On one hand, my picky child has been eating foods I never imagined would pass his lips. Pizza, spagetti (the sauce, at least), gravy on his mashed potatoes! Charlie showers on his own now. And he's done beautifully at school. Loves his teacher. Adores riding the school bus.

The problem comes when he isn't at school. He has regressed to where he was before the wonder of preschool--back to the tornado of a child I had hoped I'd seen the last of. Enlisting little Rhys as his accomplice, Charlie has been emptying hampers full of dirty laundry and throwing the clothing around the room. He's been urinating in my house! Pouring milk on my kitchen floor. Coloring on my furniture with pink sidewalk chalk. Spitting at me. Ripping entire boxes of tissues into tiny pieces and tossing them around like confetti. Escaping through windows and climbing fences and pulling down blinds and curtains and breaking windows on my van. The two little delinquents sneak upstairs and throw things out the window. Toys, candy, books, cd's, pillows... anything they can get their hands on. Today it was snaps. An entire bag of snap pieces rained down on my driveway.

I should take this moment to clarify that though Rhys surely makes his own contribution to the chaos, he never does anything like this on his own. His largest motivation, it seems, is pleasing his big brother. While I suspect that Charlie's motivation is to con Rhys into doing the dirty work.

I just can't keep up anymore. I'm drowning. I really wish that someone would take me seriously about my trouble with Charlie and HELP me!