Silence is never a good thing when it comes to toddlers

Here we go again...just a first time mom learning the hard way…again! This summarizes a list of the most recent things I've learned. When you are engrossed in doing something productive and everything all of a sudden gets real quiet and your toddler is not in immediate view,

These are the things it almost NEVER means:

Your child is almost never sitting quietly in the corner looking at a book;

Your child is almost never working a puzzle or playing quietly with a safe toy;

Your child is most likely not amusing himself with something simple like playing with the Velcro on his sandal;

Your child is probably not just curled up sleeping somewhere where he randomly fell asleep without you knowing (really…does this ever happen?…I’ve seen pictures where someone’s kid suddenly fell asleep on the kitchen floor…oh come on! Well all I can say is that never happens here)

What the silence possibly (and probably) DOES mean:

Noah…er…I mean “Your child” has somehow gotten into the guest bathroom and is playing in the toilet water, and/or unrolling ALL of the toilet paper and/or playing with the nasty toilet scrub brush;

Your child is sifting, with his hands, the cat litter;

Your child has gotten a hold of your cordless phone and is in the process of calling China;

Your child has chosen this precise moment to learn how to unscrew the cap off of a bottle of water and is pouring it all over your new living room rug;

Your child is happily sitting on the kitchen floor playing with 2 steak knives, a flame lighter and a pair of scissors that you were certain were out of his reach;

Your child has disabled the child lock on the kitchen cabinet and is pretending (thank God only pretending) to drink out of a bottle of Windex;

Your child is quietly unfolding and throwing the basket full of laundry that you just painstakingly folded but hadn’t gotten around to putting away;

Your child is in the next room attempting to eat a bug he found in the corner;

Your child has pushed over a chair to the kitchen counter and is happily pushing every button on the answering machine, erasing all kinds of messages;

Your child is standing on the middle of the kitchen table reaching up to try and hang on the chandelier (and I thought “hanging from the chandelier” was just an exaggerated phrase);

Your child has gotten into your purse and is coloring his face with your lipstick while concurrently pushing the panic alarm button on your keys.

These aren’t scenarios I’m copying out of some parenting magazine. I came up with all of these on my own…lets just say… from…astute observation. Believe it or not I actually have more things to list but I’m going to stop now. Yes, speaking from experience, it is in fact possible for all of these scenarios to occur in the same 24hour period (or less)...like on the 3rd Tuesday of every month, for example.