Rules You Never Imagined You'd Have to Make

I just got a great email from my sister-in-law, Kristi. Here's what she wrote:

I left the kids (McKay, 4, and Lyla, almost 2) for one minute to go feed the baby in the bedroom and as I sat down, I heard McKay screaming "Ah Mom! Lyla's eating the mouse trap!"

Me: "Oh shoot!! McKay please take the mouse trap from her!"

Lyla: screaming bloody murder, "Mine, mine, mine!"

Mckay: "No no Lyla. We don't eat the mouse traps. It will pinch you really hard!"

Great moment, huh?

As a mom, I've had to declare a lot of things off limits that I never would have imagined! "We don't eat mousetraps" hasn't made my list yet - but here are a few "rules" I've had to make on the fly:

• "It's not OK to try to flatten your brother's head by smooshing it into the ground" (I just had to say this a minute ago)
• "We don't try to walk on ledges with our eyes closed to see what it feels like" (or you just might end up with stitches in your chin - Oliver found out the hard way)
• "We don't say awesome things are dumb" (Silas just asked me to declare this rule in response to Oliver's response to something)
• "It's not allowed to do flips on the beanbags in the TV room when you have friends over because they could try to do it and break their necks." 
• "We don't eat things off the floor when we don't even know what they are." (I tried "we don't eat things off the floor" but that just wasn't realistic...) 
• "It's not OK to dump out all the pinto beans in the pantry."
• "Do not use Vaseline as furniture polish (especially on upholstered furniture)."

I do try not to say "NO" too often (read this great article about saying yes). And I try to explain the "no's" as much as possible. But what's obviously not OK to an adult, is often quite obviously fun and fine to a child. So the new rules and "no's" and explanations must go on!

What are some of the crazy "rules" you've had to make with your kids?