We have a cutter in the house. 

One who knows where all the scissors are, no matter how carefully they’ve been hidden.

She was very busy for a few mornings, cutting tags out of clothing.  It seems like a non-issue?  But here’s the deal.  When a mom is constantly shuffling clothing around in an unending cycle of hand-me-down fun, what she really needs is the added guesswork of having NO STINKING IDEA what size the said hand-me-downs are. 

Seriously.

I thought it couldn’t get worse.  Oh, hoh, hoh, hoh!  I should’ve known!  With children it can always (hear me?  ALWAAAAAAYS) get worse.

During nap, our little cutter snipped gashes into the top and bottom of her new comforter, one in her brother’s new comforter, one in her fitted sheet and – WAIT FOR IT – cut a circle out of the thigh of her pants.  Check it out in the photo above if you don’t take me at my word.  Doesn’t she look like an axtra for the ‘Thriller’ music video?

Why, why, why?

“Because they were too tight.”

She’s kidding, let me assure you.  They fit her fine, she just needed some air down there and wanted to show off her mad scissor skills.

Jac, upon finding the destruction, took the scissors away (the THIRD pair to be removed from her custody THAT DAY) and sent her back to bed because he couldn’t deal with her calmly.  “Wait until your mother can talk to you!” Ha!  Like I could be calm about it?

Funny thing is, I thought I could.  I actually laughed about the pants.  But then the comforters and sheets were pointed out and I too couldn’t face it all at once.

So I called my mom.  She laughed and assured me Tess wan’t doing it to be mean.  Then she suggested a fabulous consequence. In the perfect “punishment fits the crime” way, the verdict was handed down to Tess:

You shall cut all you want.  You shall cut until you can’t cut anymore.  You will cut this all if you ever want to eat again.

Okay, so not really “AGAIN” again; she just needed to cut for an hour before she could have supper.

At first she thought it was awesome.  Unlimited access to scissors and fun things to cut?  Areyoukiddingme? But then, as will happen, reality set in upon her after 15 minutes.  This was not fun!  I want to be done!

“My fingers hurt!”

Bummer. 45 minutes to go!

Mom was pretty positive that this would break her of the habit.  A little over-dose to scare her straight.  It looked as if it would be so, but after she had eaten dinner you kknow what her first request was?

“Can I finish my cutting?”

Oy.

*Let the record show that while we do own a ridiculous number of scissors (you can never have too many!), they are all put away and are to be used with adult supervision.  But we had just rearranged their room and I have a feeling some had been stashed away by the leettle arteests and were found and hidden again during the room makeover.  Shneaky, shneaky! Fool me once. . .