Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Before I had a kid...

Before I had a kid there were a lot of "momisms" that I didn't understand, that escaped me, or that I just plain dismissed. One that I just couldn't bring myself to believe was when parents describe these seemingly impossible feats that their kids performed "when my back was turned for just a minute." I heard of kids taking apart small appliances, shaving the dog, covering entire rooms with baby powder, soundlessly breaking all of the Christmas ornaments, etc. And of course, kidless me, I would think, "Yeah, right. That 'minute' was probably more like an hour."

Fast forward to January 16, 2008. Here's the scene: I'm cooking dinner and J is happily coloring with his markers that a friend gave him as part of an art set for Christmas.
(of course he was so cutely engrossed in coloring that I had to take a picture):

The above picture was taken at around 6:31pm. Right after taking it, I went into the kitchen, turning my back just for a minute to stir my risotto. When I went in the kitchen J was sitting just as pictured above, in his PBK chair in the playroom. When I turned back around maybe 2 minutes later, J was standing right behind me in the kitchen and he scared the crap out of me. (I kid you not this child can sneak around like a frigging ninja. I should put a bell around his neck like we do for cats. Anyway.) Then I saw that one side of his face was covered in purple marker like some kind of Mike Tyson tribal tattoo. About one nanosecond later I looked over his shoulder and that's when I saw THIS (picture taken at about 6:35pm):

That's right. While my back was turned for less than 2 minutes, J colored all over his face, climbed out of his chair without knocking over the art set on his lap or making any sound, came into the kitchen right behind me, and COLORED ALL OVER THE REFRIGERATOR IN PURPLE MARKER. THE REFRIGERATOR THAT WE DON'T OWN. BECAUSE WE DON'T OWN THIS HOUSE.

And being the good mom-blogger that I am, after a little lecture (well, yelling) at J about how we don't color on anything but paper, and look what he did to our fridge, and wait til Daddy sees this, etc...I took a picture of it. What else can you do? Obviously there will be no more markers in this house for a long time.

(Thankfully the markers were true to their advertising and were completely "washable." That is, after about 5 applications of 409 and twenty-seven paper towels.)

3 comments:

deebo47 said...

I had to laugh out loud at this one, because I've been there and I can confirm that kids can do just about anything when your back is turned "for a minute". And it doesn't stop when they're toddlers, either (see my blog later for the soap sud incident if you're interested...). Sometimes it seems like they're just waiting for you to be: on the phone, in the bathroom, holding a curling iron, cooking, etc., so they can get up to no good. But one thing that does improve with time is your ability to have Spidey sense and know when they're up to something, so sometimes you can stop them before they go too far. All I can say is, forgot 409, invest in the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser (and lots of them):)

LauraC said...

I have been laughing about this since you posted it! I will say this is one major difference between a singleton and twin household. We don't give the boys as much "freedom" with anything that can leave marks - crayons, markers, paint. We count everything before the kids leave our sight.

Oh yes, DH is toooooo AR!

Kaycee said...

LMBO!! That's hilarious. I totally feel you. I have green crayon streaks down my tv screen. It is great that we can laugh it off(since it's our own kid ya know?) LOL!