You know something really bad has happened when your six- and four-year-old come to you with frightened faces and say softly, “We’re sorry. It was an accident.” This was the start to our afternoon today.
They had only been out of the room for a few minutes, but still – if they were proactively apologizing instead of waiting for me to find it, it must be horribly bad.
“What did you do?” I barked sharply.
“We’re sorry. It was an accident,” our oldest daughter repeated. “We accidentally wrote on the headboard.”
“What?!?” I exclaimed. “That is NOT an accident!”
So I marched them back to the scene of the crime, our younger daughter’s room, and examined the evidence. We had never gotten a “real” headboard; instead, we had mounted four large, interlocking foam squares in bright colors that matched her room to the wall above her bed. This afternoon, our llamas decided those squares needed to be illustrated with pens and crayola markers, so each quadrant featured a different picture.
I stormed down the hall, yelling at the girls as I made my way to the laundry room to get my handy Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. A friend with young kids had recommended this years ago and at the risk of sounding like a victim of marketing, it is AWESOME. If the Magic Eraser can’t get a stain or mark off of something, it simply can’t be cleaned.
However, every awesome product has its limits. And Mr. Clean was no match today for two young girls and their weapons of minimal destruction – pens and markers.
After sending our older daughter to her room and our youngest to the den, I continued to scrub the headboard because SURELY my Magic Eraser could fix this problem. I also alternately yelled out menacing comments to the girls and muttered ridiculous things under my breath. That’s when my husband came home and found me saying in an angry tone, “Well I guess we just can’t HAVE nice things.”
This, of course, caused both of us to giggle because a) the girls weren’t around to hear us or think this was anything but a very serious situation; b) the notion of this makeshift headboard being classified as “nice things” was funny because the entire thing probably cost less than $10; and c) it reminded both of us of an old Paula Poundstone routine she used to do about her mom. Maybe you’ve heard it, too:
“She used to get mad over absolutely everything. I remember one time I knocked a Flintstones glass off the table and she said, ‘Dammit, we can’t have nice things.’”
So in the end, our girls spent much of the afternoon in their rooms as punishment – and probably making copious mental notes about their crazy mother they’ll one day use in a comedy sketch (best case scenario) or tell-all memoir (worst case). My husband got the marks off the foam squares with rubbing alcohol (my hero!). And I got paid back for smugly thinking my kids were beyond that stage when a friend last week was describing her child’s destructive actions.
That’s what happens when you get cocky. You get a mark for bad behavior.
They had only been out of the room for a few minutes, but still – if they were proactively apologizing instead of waiting for me to find it, it must be horribly bad.
“What did you do?” I barked sharply.
“We’re sorry. It was an accident,” our oldest daughter repeated. “We accidentally wrote on the headboard.”
“What?!?” I exclaimed. “That is NOT an accident!”
So I marched them back to the scene of the crime, our younger daughter’s room, and examined the evidence. We had never gotten a “real” headboard; instead, we had mounted four large, interlocking foam squares in bright colors that matched her room to the wall above her bed. This afternoon, our llamas decided those squares needed to be illustrated with pens and crayola markers, so each quadrant featured a different picture.
I stormed down the hall, yelling at the girls as I made my way to the laundry room to get my handy Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. A friend with young kids had recommended this years ago and at the risk of sounding like a victim of marketing, it is AWESOME. If the Magic Eraser can’t get a stain or mark off of something, it simply can’t be cleaned.
However, every awesome product has its limits. And Mr. Clean was no match today for two young girls and their weapons of minimal destruction – pens and markers.
After sending our older daughter to her room and our youngest to the den, I continued to scrub the headboard because SURELY my Magic Eraser could fix this problem. I also alternately yelled out menacing comments to the girls and muttered ridiculous things under my breath. That’s when my husband came home and found me saying in an angry tone, “Well I guess we just can’t HAVE nice things.”
This, of course, caused both of us to giggle because a) the girls weren’t around to hear us or think this was anything but a very serious situation; b) the notion of this makeshift headboard being classified as “nice things” was funny because the entire thing probably cost less than $10; and c) it reminded both of us of an old Paula Poundstone routine she used to do about her mom. Maybe you’ve heard it, too:
“She used to get mad over absolutely everything. I remember one time I knocked a Flintstones glass off the table and she said, ‘Dammit, we can’t have nice things.’”
So in the end, our girls spent much of the afternoon in their rooms as punishment – and probably making copious mental notes about their crazy mother they’ll one day use in a comedy sketch (best case scenario) or tell-all memoir (worst case). My husband got the marks off the foam squares with rubbing alcohol (my hero!). And I got paid back for smugly thinking my kids were beyond that stage when a friend last week was describing her child’s destructive actions.
That’s what happens when you get cocky. You get a mark for bad behavior.
No comments:
Post a Comment