"Can't We Have Anything Nice?"

Do you remember your parents, most likely your mom, saying this repeatedly when you were a kid? My parents are very big on taking care of the stuff you have so that you don't have to buy it again. I'm pretty sure that not taking care of your possessions is my dad's #1 pet peeve. It is definitely mine. I realize that I am a little fanatical in this respect, especially in today's disposable society. Chris is much less worried about stuff getting broken and needing to be replaced.

So, can I just take a minute to vent/beg for ideas? Hadden is like a tornado around here. He runs, jumps, crashes, bonks, yanks, throws, and stomps on anything he can get near. We have repeatedly explained the reason that we have rules around the house is so that people don't get hurt and things don't get broken. I feel, however, that everything we have ever said on this topic has been lost on him. Aside from the zillion or so times a day he accidentally (or not so accidentally) hurts Calla, it seems like he is on a complete destruction spree lately. Yesterday, we were trying to be outside so as not to go absolutely crazy, and Hadden decided to take the "big car" (the kind you pedal Flintstones style) down the driveway at top speeds while Calla was hanging on to the back. She couldn't run that fast and was holding on by her hands while her knees dragged all the way down the driveway. Mind you, I was chasing them screaming "stop, stop, stop," to no avail. By the time they reached the bottom, The knees on Calla's hideously expensive down snowsuit were worn down to almost nothing. "At least it wasn't her skull," I kept trying to tell myself.

Then, this morning, I was trying to clean up breakfast and make yogurt, while the kids ran around in their underwear and diaper (They love to be naked, and I rarely indulge them, so I was trying to be nice). After about 10 minutes, Hadden came in and said he needed me to come see something. Well, it turns out that something was one of the brackets from Calla's curtains torn from the wall with a 6 inch gaping hole where it used to be firmly attached. In order to fully understand my fury, please understand that Hadden has already broken the valence and the open/close stick from his own blinds, which are only 2 years old. We have forbidden him from touching any window coverings at least 50 times each day and have resorted to pulling most blinds all the way up and hiding the cords during the day since he was one. Needless to say, I flipped out when I saw the hole in the wall. After he had spent a long time in his own room, I made him go to the bank, withdraw money from his savings account and go to Lowes and buy the materials to fix the wall. Hopefully we can remount the curtains after we fix and repaint the wall, though they will have to be mounted lower on the wall since that spot will no longer hold the bracket weight, being that it's made up of only Sheetrock mud and not of any substantial material!

So, is the answer, "No, we can't have anything nice?" Or, is there some way to teach a four year-old boy not to tear the house and everything in it apart bit by bit? Please, enlighten me!