Medium: Pen & Ink

My kids are very well behaved. In general, I mean. Of course they whine, fight, complain, and disobey on a regular basis, just like every normal kid out there, but still. I can take them into a store without a cart and leave with my sanity intact. Assuming of course that I'm not in a hurry, the store isn't packed, and Aaron is with me.

They really don't do very naughty things...yet. We haven't had any scissors incidents, or pushing anyone off of high furniture, or anything like that. Leah did use a bunch of my scrapbooking stickers once, without permission, but really, it wasn't too big of a deal. I realized that after the blinding flash behind my eyes dissapated.

However. Both children seem to have a weakness for pens.

About a week after we brought Ben home from the hospital, when Leah was not quite 2 years old, she found a purple Sharpie marker. And those Sharpies are permanent, ya'all. Fortunately she did not use the heirloom bassinet skirt (which we were borrowing from friends) as her canvas, but instead chose her own body, like so many (tattoo) artists today. Specifially, her pants, hands, and face. Amazingly it came right off of her skin. Not so for the pants, which, fortunately for ME, was half of a brand new garage-sale outfit. (I would include a photo...maybe another day, when I know where things are.)

UNfortunately, her artistry did not stop there. She also wanted to decorate her favorite new toys, the babies that came with her Big-Sister Dora doll, which I'd given her in the hospital when she first met Ben. I was particulary peeved about this, because I rarely buy her honest-to-goodness new toys, and this one was one I'd been planning for awhile. The babies are solid plastic, but the purple "accents" (including all four eyes being completely covered) did not come off easily, even with rubbing alcohol. The stains have now turned a faint pink.

Ben had his first experience with true naughtiness yesterday while Aaron and I were both otherwise occupied getting ready for our days. Leah has a dot-to-dot game that includes a dry erase marker. And Ben tried it out, using the off-white carpet in the living room as his canvas. And it's a flat-type carpet, which means it worked REALLY WELL as a canvas. We're talking five or six big swipes right in the middle of the room.

Most of the marks came out with just water, but we bought some fancy carpet cleaner too. And still, if you look really hard, you can tell where they are. So we may try something else, but I'm really hoping that the first carpet we replace isn't in our temporary house.