Please note that I had not left the television on. I also didn’t leave the drawer empty and open. There’s no need to comment on how dangerous this is. It’s a very sturdy chest of drawers and we arranged the structure to be as stable as possible, but I was still horrified. We will be installing child locks on the drawers and tethering the furniture to the wall.

(As a side note, aren’t you sick of reading disclaimers like this on blogs written by mothers? I’m sick of writing them and would like to assume that anyone who knows me or has read my blog would have enough faith in me to realize that I’m not an idiot hellbent on letting my children kill themselves. Still, there always seems to be at least one commenter who’s available to let me know that should my child eat a pound of the flowers pictured behind her, she could be poisoned!!!! In fact, after creating this post, I almost deleted the picture of the kids in the drawer and the picture of Norah with paint on her mouth because I didn’t want to have to deal with anyone thinking I was putting my kids in harm’s way. At any rate, I’m going to try to stop explaining my actions so much. I’m a decent mother and I’m doing my best to keep my kids safe. On occasion, when they do something ridiculous but not imminently dangerous, I take a picture before I fix the situation.)

Then, because our floors were just way too clean, I decided to help the kids make a painting. It started out pretty well – shirts were removed ahead of time, a towel was beneath the canvas.