Home Depot Shopping List...

* 8 hook locks for bathrooms/bedrooms/basement door
* 2 deadbolts for the TOP of the front door & back (outside basement) door
* 2 medicine cabinet locks

This morning I was awakened by my neighbor calling me on the phone around 7:30am (Thank you Angela!) to notify me that my 3yr. old was outside running around by himself, she had chased him back into the house & told him to go back to bed. Everyone was up late last night and so everyone was still sleeping... but JOSH - he is my poor sleeper. He gets up at all hours, can stay up super late and will still wake up before anyone else. I discovered him the night before around 4am wandering around the kitchen looking for the cereal (and no, he wasn't sleeping - he just figured he could get up at that time). It would be one thing if he just needed less sleep, but he needs more than he is getting and it is OBVIOUS.

He usually wakes everyone up too, but has been getting in trouble for waking up his siblings - the other 3 kiddos sleep a good 2 or more hours than he does on average, in fact Jordan is STILL sleeping (it's 8:45am) and he fell asleep before Josh did. He woke up Ryan & Katie around 7:40am, I just managed to get him quiet & out of the hallway before he woke up Jordan too.

So that is why I'm getting deadbolts for the TOP of the door (he knows how to get a chair to open the other high locks we have on the front door).

I'm getting the hook locks for the bedroom/bathroom doors because of the incident with 1yr. old Ryan the other day where he snuck into our dark bedroom, dark bathroom, climbed up INTO the sink with nice new jammies on and turned ON the water. I went looking for him and found him sitting in warm (thankfully not hot) water and the sink on the verge of overflowing, chewing on our toothbrushes in the DARK. Then there's the other bedrooms where if Jordan forgets to take down his ladder to his bunkbed, Ryan will climb up without any problems.

Ryan LOVES to play in the toilet and keeps watch on the door, so if anyone forgets to close it... he is IN there throwing toys into the water.

Then we have Joshua AGAIN... last night he decided he needed makeup... so he climbed up onto the bathroom counter, reached up to the top shelf and pulled down some FINGERNAIL POLISH - and he started to put it on his LIPS. He came running out spitting all over and yelling... we got him cleaned up only to discover that baby was right behind him drinking shampoo.

Time to get serious with the locks around here. It's one thing to train them to NOT do these things, but when you have so many areas that need training you need desperate measures at least temporarily.

Soft restraints for Josh are out of the question since we are trying to get him potty trained. ;o)