In the interest of eating my whole bowl of cereal in one sitting, I'm letting The Boy empty the contents of our toy closet all over the bedroom floor. He's dumping the Candyland box as I type. (Now we have a ready-made activity for the hours between preschool and dinner: cleaning it up!)

What sort of mischief do you let your kids get away with just to get some "quiet time" for yourself?

Legos - I let them dump a big storage box of legos out in the living room. Keeps them busy for hours! I have learned a trick, put a sheet under the legos so when its time to pick them up just pick up the corners of the sheet and dump them back in the box.

FP, I used to let the whole house of preschoolers (up to six of them at a time) dump every toy in the house - just so we could have a clean up time transition between free play time and nap time. It was awesome!

The worst story I have though is the one where I let my daughter eat a bunch of chapstick while I was on a phone call with one of my bride moms back when I was a bridal consultant. Ri was a year and a half, and she was a holy terror! She would scream her head off at me for attention every time I had a business call come in. So this time, I sat there signaling the quiet sign and shaking my head no as she started to lick the stick. She grinned an evil little grin then took a small nibble. I started to grab the stick from her and she started to scream so I quickly gave it back and stood there watching in horror, shaking my head no and letting her eat several bites of the stick before I could get through the call. I then called poison control, because I was terrified she'd die from eating chapstick. The guy on the phone actually sort of chuckled at me and said, "It's intended for the lips, so it is nontoxic. She might get a little loose stools, but it shouldn't harm her or require any treatment."

Bad, bad mommy!

Dumping sand out of the sand box onto the patio. This seemingly is the Dragon's favorite outside activity and will keep him busy for a long time

What Alan said, and also allowing him to dump sand into the container garden. That had to have been good for the tomatoes.

heaven only knows what he's doing behind me while i goof around at my desk with you guys. probably pulling down the curtains.

Let me just say those magic eraser things are kick ass.
I actually let El D (who is a private pooper) color the floor and wall when he poops. Heathen worthy I know but we both get to crap in peace. (what? tmi?)

GG - I'm only hoping you mean with crayons or markers.

pbm - eesh. ha! um, washable crayons at that...

what's wrong with letting your kids color on the walls with poo? I adds a nice, earthy aroma to the room.

I let my boys eat cookies for breakfast just to shut them up sometimes when I'm not fully awake.

when i'm hanging out washing i let her go nuts with the dirt, mud, rocks, etc. And i put an inch or so of water in this dish-bucket thing for her to splash, stand in, sit in, whatever. She always needs a bath right after i've hung out the washing. And her clothes are usually sopping wet too. She found a snail and tried to taste it the other day - i doubt she'll do that again though, the look on her face was "gah" all over. She tears my potplants apart, moves all the dress-rocks from one planter to another, (and then refills from a third), sprays my legs with the little pump sprayer thing, causes general mayhem. She loves it. I rarely say 'no' outside, only if it's about spiders or falling dangers. Any 'dangerous' plants have been moved out of range. (Thorns, poisons, etc.)