I should've been more specific

My favorite episode of The X-Files is "Je Souhaite." (I always liked their Monster/Supernatural Entity of the Week episodes better than the whole Aliens + Government arc anyway. But I digress.) In this episode, a genie grants wishes that end up causing more harm than good, because people just aren't specific enough when making them - or because they don't consider the consequences. Want to be invisible? Great, but remember that trucks can't see you when you go outside to run around. Wish for peace on earth? Well, Earth is awfully peaceful with no one else on it. Late in the episode, the genie reveals that she, too, wasn't all that smart about wishing - one day, back in fourteenth-century France when she ran across a powerful genie, she made two practical wishes. Then she wished for great power and long life...and that's how she ended up rolled up in a carpet for six hundred years, granting wishes to everyone who unrolled her. She says, ruefully, "I should've been more specific."

Having a three-year-old is kind of like that - the having to be more specific part, I mean. My problem is, I don't always realize how specific one needs to be around a three-year-old. Apparently, when I said to Boy Wonder, "Hey! Get your finger out of your nose!" I should have added, "And just in case you're thinking of sticking puzzle pieces in your nose, don't do that either! Same goes for markers! And action figures!" And when I said, "Stop kicking the TV stand!" I should have also said, "And don't put a cup over your foot and kick the TV stand, either! And don't whack the TV stand with an action figure!" And don't..."