How are we supposed to raise healthy kids when all they want to do is find creative ways to kill themselves?

The kids are thirteen months old now. I don't know if they're going through a phase of triskaidekaphobia or what, but as of the last two months or so they've been going out of their way to find new and novel ways to kill themselves. They're really good at this. "Child proof" electrical covers? Yeah, Lilly figured those out about a month ago. She laughs at us when she takes the covers off. Literally looks at us and laughs. Nolan drinks bathwater. He plunges his face into the bathwater and drinks it like a dog. He ends up with a soapfaced Santa look when he's done. And don't get me started with the way they're both fascinated with loading themselves up in the dishwasher.

But today was the cake. The cake with icing on the top. We bought our Christmas tree yesterday, we didn't have one last year. Being the diligent sort that we are, we secured the area with a baby gate so the kids couldn't reach the tree. So far, so good. However, we may have brought a critter in with the tree all Clark W. Griswold style. Oh the things that you don't plan for.

We live in a somewhat wooded area of Dallas. This is relative, of course, but there's a creek in front of our house with trees and tall grass. We also have two cats. Two very proud cats. They've brought us snakes and mice in the past, including one very entertaining moment when we shooed the cat out the front door with a marginally alive mouse in its mouth only to have that same cat with the same marginally living mouse appear at the dog door out back.

It's possible we brought the mouse at the heart of this story in with the tree. It's also possible that one of the cats brought it in last night. Either way...there was a mouse with the Christmas tree.

This morning started well. The kids got up around 7:15. We watched them run around, and kept them from killing themselves. Then they ate aroun 8:15. About 8:45 I excused myself to go read in the bathroom. And poop. Reading and poop. Anyway, I get all settled in, got everything set up how I want it, and I'm all ready to spend the next few minutes of my life undisturbed in the bathroom when I hear it.

I hear my wife screaming bloody murder. The kind of screaming you hear and you instantly think "oh shit, I'm down to one kid now" without really knowing what else might be going on. So I yell out, "What's going on?" Hearing no response, but more screaming, I did what any responsible father would do. I came out of the bathroom to check it out. I'm not even going to tell you how. Anyway, I open the bedroom door and my wife is there and she breathlessly tells me that Lilly was holding a mouse. I ask, "dead"? She says yes. So I return to the bathroom. This isn't an emergency anymore, right? Go throw the dead mouse away and clean the girl's hands....right?

So I get situated again to complete the job I set out to do (I'm a finisher!). Not 90 seconds later I hear MORE SCREAMING! Knowing that the kids hadn't stabbed themselves, and that this was likely just mouse-fallout, I was nonplussed.

When I returned to the kitchen, my white-faced wife was frantically scrubbing both of the kids in the sink saying, "He had it in his mouth!"

I asked for clarification, "Nolan had the dead mouse in his mouth?"

"YES!"

Again, nonplussed. I go examine this mouse, which is located right in the middle of the living room floor.

The mouse was dead. Those cats are cold blooded killers. The mouse had a surgical-precision tooth puncture in its throat. I don't think mousey suffered much.

Apparently, Nolan reacted to momma's total freakout about the dead fuzzy mouse by picking the mouse up, then putting it in his mouth and carrying it in his mouth across half the room. There's a part of me that is really proud of that boy. There's another part of me that wants to call poison control.

The mouse was wrapped lovingly in a paper towel and buried respectfully in a trash can full of food scraps and coffee grounds. His mouse family did not attend. Yes, I did one "he's still alive!" move just to see if I could get my wife to pee in her pants. Close, but not quite.

This story ends with a question mark. Will our children develop the hantavirus? This is the season for that after all, Hanta ryhmes with Santa! Will our children turn into part mouse-part people superheros? The big question has to do with how else the children will attempt to kill themselves. So far they've tried electrocution, intentional drowning, falls, bludgeoning themselves, human dishwashing and now an attempt to poison themselves with dead rodentia. It almost makes me miss that period of time where they couldn't move on their own. Almost.