There's a Gadget for that!

Lately Gadgets have become my Best Friend.

Dilemma#1-

My Children will not brush their teeth.  

They will put the tooth brush in, move it around until the toothpaste disappears and call it good.

I needed to find a way to make brushing fun, and fun-ctional

This weekend at Target
 (I love Target) 

I found these:

Spiderman and Barbie

You push the red button and they start to flash for one minute.  When they stop flashing, you stop brushing.

Jack thought this was the coolest thing he had ever seen.

So he brushed.

 For one minute straight.

Hooray!

Madeline on the other hand....

Is still a work in progress...

Dilemma # 2

I have an escape artist

Every night we would kiss Jack goodnight, shut his door and wait.

It was just a matter of time before we would hear little footsteps from one end of the second floor to the other.  We would catch him in my office, in our bathroom, in my closet.....

Clay and I would alternate going up to catch him in the act. 

It got to the point were Clay would just hide next to his door and try catch him as soon as he set foot into the hallway.

The last straw came when we found him one morning, with Clay's Ipad, which was dead.  The T.V. was on the cartoon network, the Playstation was on and he was dead asleep next to a half empty bag of Cheetos(which he KNOWS he's not allowed to eat).

I felt like the worst parent on the planet.  

How long had he been up?  How could we not have heard him?  What are we going to do?  

After many, many calls to my girlfriends, mothers, co-workers and Best Friends we found a solution.

A Door Alarm.

$16.95

From Home Depot.

It has two settings.

One setting sounds like you have just entered a 7/11

The second setting sounds like you are killing a very large bird.

Both scare the crap out of him.

We explained to him that this door alarm was just a reminder for when he forgets that it's bedtime and accidentally gets up too soon.

After we closed the door and headed downstairs it was about 3 minutes before we heard the chime for the first time.

Clay and I looked at each other and smiled.

We went back upstairs and explained again, how important it is that he listen to us and stay in bed.

And he has since.

Double Hooray!

Two battles down.

1,345,678 to go....