Kids are notorious for destroying things. I am not the first nor the last parent to have every nice thing I own destroyed by the kids. There is even a great website to showcase this called shitmykidsruined.com. I can relate to that site. I laugh at the pics on there and tell myself I have been lucky that my kids have never done that!
You expect the usual stuff - crayons on walls and food stuck in the carpet. We even tell ourselves that the lamp being knocked over by a ball in the house is a perfectly normal experience. When we have the first child, we are wildly optimistic that the kid will simply LEARN not to touch the breakable things - by the second we start to child proof - by the third we have given up all hope that anything even remotely nice or expensive will survive in the house, so we hide it all.
The first time something valuable to me was ruined was when my first son was two. I had this lovely hand-painted platter I received as a wedding gift. It was on a plate stand on the baker's rack in the kitchen. The kid climbed up and knocked it off, accidentally. I was really upset and mad at my husband for not watching him better, but of course I got over it.
Since then I had numerous things destroyed: at least 5-6 vases, a few lamps, an ottoman, end tables, a kitchen table, two desks, a leather recliner (spilled diffuser oil on it, which discolored it), numerous rugs, carpets, clothing, and the most expensive the 40" flat screen television (via a Wii remote thrown into it), and so many other things that my house is simply a museum of old ruined things that I tell myself not to bother replacing because the destroyers (um, kids) will just ruin them. If you have a prized possession the best way to protect it (if such a thing is really possible) is to wrap it up and stick it in a box in the back of the closet. There is no admiring done in my household of three (okay, four with my husband) rowdy and totally unaware boys.
I have lowered my expectations so much that I often go to lovely furniture and home decorating stores and fantasize about the beautiful, unstained, unscratched, furniture that still has all of its legs and all of its material. I contemplate buying these lovely things or perhaps just one "showcase" piece to enjoy in my house, and then I remember that I live with destroyers. You see, I now choose things to bring into my house based on how long it will be usable (not beautiful) - so the ottoman without buttons, the furniture with purple pen streaking the cushions, the wobbly kitchen table where the leg has been nailed back on 18 times, the chipped and mismatched dishes, all do not matter if they don't look good - it just matters that they serve their purpose (to keep the monsters happy).
This brings me to the most expensive destruction I have had in a while, mostly because I thought the kids had broken everything of value. Yes, something worse than destroying my husband's cherished giant TV. I was cleaning my car out (which I could count the whole car as one giant destroyed item, but that is another story) and letting Ellis play around in it while I was scooping out the garbage. He was pushing buttons and pretending to drive like all small children do when allowed to roam around in the car. After I finished cleaning up, I leaned over the front seat to pick up something from the floor, and I noticed a penny stuck in the car charger plug (it hadn't been working for about a week), and then I see three pennies sticking out of the slot of my 6 disc DVD player. I try to scrape them out and I manage to get one, but the other two just fall inside.
My husband comes home to tear apart the car and take the DVD player out. He manages to remove all of the pennies (four of them) and re-installs the DVD player into the car. When he starts the car, he gets nothing but an error code. We call the car dealership and they tell us that the DVD player is ruined. The cost to replace it $875. Yup. The two year old managed to do $875 worth of damage with some pennies.
The worst part is we are thinking of spending the ridiculous amount of money to replace it. Why? Because the only way we can keep the destroyers from destroying everything else in the car is to keep them entertained with the TV.
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