I received a text from Emily that her friend has a “Ruby-ish” child and is struggling and feels that she is alone.

Emily requested some Ruby stories, to help her friend feel better and realize there are lots of crazy kids out there. :)  After I wrote the email I realized I needed to save it for family history purposes, which means it needs to be posted to my blog.

Here is the email in it’s entirety.

Emily, 

I honestly don’t have a lot of photo evidence of the really bad moments, because either she was in too dangerous of a situation to take a picture (on top of the fridge) or I was too in shock by the disaster or situation that she created to think of documenting it (this is the usual culprit).  

But, I do have some that sum up her personality quite accurately.  

Our life was all down hill when Ruby started walking at 10 months and climbing at 11 months.  And figuring out how to get out of her highchair straps at 13 months.  Hence I have lots of pictures of Ruby on the table.  

She destroys most toys.  Every toy she got for her 3rd birthday was broken by the end of the day, new stroller (her first one she got when he was 18 months and it lasted a few days until it started breaking), minnie mouse couch, and princess tent.  

She has also bitten every head off the princess figures that were macey’s.  This is Dora’s mom that she destroyed the first day I got the dora house down for her.  

Lots of holes in clothing. 

Obviously she’s a dumper.  All it takes is me turning my back or going to dry my hair.  

Nothing is off limits to her dumping, although she rarely dumps things in plain sight like in the kitchen or living room.  She is usually more sneaky about it and likes to dump things in people’s rooms.  

She also hides things.  Once I found Macey’s diary key in the bottom of the aquafor. 

Many things have gotten flushed down the toilet.  Car keys included.  

she loves to get her own snacks.  We installed a lock on the pantry and child locks on the fridge and freezer (which she broke within the first day).  I’ve got her off the top shelf in the panty, fridge, getting knifes, making her own chocolate milk.  

Chairs have been pushed and pulled all over our house since she was 12 months old.  I had to get rid of all stools and toy bins that you can stand on.  

This day she locked me out of the house.  and in the time it took me to run around to the back door she had flushed my keys down the toilet, gotten the tupperware with watermelon out of the fridge and pried open and got watermelon juice on as many surfaces as possible.  

This day she locked me out to eat ice-cream.  I keep a key in my pocket now.  

every surface in our living room and her room has been drawn on.  

I forgot to put the child lock back in place one day during her nap.  She emptied every messy item from my craft drawers and left all the ribbon, paper, cards, crayons and things like that.  

Her room was covered in stamps and markers and the soles of her feet and palms of her hands were red for a few days

  Also, when we had just installed the kind of child lock you can get at toysrus, she broke it the first night and got out my sewing pins,  Her floor was covered, so was her bed and pjs’ and they were even sticking her through her pjs while she slept when we checked on her that night. We then invested in the heavy duty kind of child locks and we’ve been safer ever since.  

Remember the phase where she wouldn’t keep her diaper on at night?  We tried backwards pjs and taped the diaper on, it worked half the time.   It was a cold camping summer for her, sleeping naked.  

She’s always dirty.

and loves to get into my makeup when I forget to lock the bathroom door.  All of our doors have knobs that lock, turned around backwards with the keys hanging on hooks above the door jams. 

She can tackle kids twice her size. 

She cannot be contained and can climb most things the big kids can.  

And she gets stuck a lot.  This day she hauled this foot stool up stairs to my bathroom and got stuck.  I’ve rescued her hanging from the top of the fence, monkey bars, top of fridge, hanging from the top shelf in the panty, on top of the car…

You’d think I don’t watch her, but I really do.  It seriously just takes her 2 min to create a disaster or get into some sort of trouble.  

Running errands with this child is almost impossible.  I keep well stocked with dum dums, but that only works for a few min.  If she thinks I’m taking too long she starts throwing things out of my cart.  and always throws her shoes at me.  You should see me trying to get her buckled in most days.  There’s a lot of stiff arming and sweating happening until she is somewhat secure.  

I believe she ran into the parking lot 3x during the kids haircut this past week and then when i would grab her she would spit at me, pull my hair and hit me.  Eventually she had to be put in her carseat in the hot car for 15 min. cause it was safer than running into the parking lot.  

She’s the most stubborn kid i’ve had. 

But cute too. 

And please, assure your friend I am an amazing mom who does not let her children run wild with no supervision. Tell her how good Crew and Macey are (you should probably leave miles out of it).  :)