Ilan and the Blue Paint Pen (life with two boys)
I left to go the grocery store tonight. The bath was ready, and my husband – David –
was bathing the boys while I was gone.
When I returned a short time later, I noticed blue lines on the floor
going from the garage door through our family room and into the bathroom where
the boys were. “What’s this blue stuff?”
I asked as I walked into the bathroom, “Where’s Ilan? And, why isn’t he in the tub?”
Aaron was in the tub.
The tub was very full and David did not want to leave Aaron alone
(seeing as how we’d already had one scare that night as Aaron had choked on a
chicken bone, I understood his concern about not experiencing a near
drowning). Ilan, he told me, would not
come into the bathroom. He was in
Aaron’s bed (stealing Aaron’s pacifiers).
The blue lines, which I soon discovered to be from a blue
paint pen Ilan had taken off my desk, COVERED the floor in the boys' bedroom, went down the hallway from their room back into the family room,
around and under the kitchen table, through the front hallway and into my
office. Two rooms of carpeting and several of tile were now carefully outlined in blue paint lines.
It was a long night.
Ilan thought he was drawing a street (around the entire house). He also made some beautiful “I’s” – his best
yet, but I have no record of them for his baby book as they were on my office
walls. And, thanks to Grandma Bunny (my
mom), whom I called immediately, my husband and I offered a calm, rational and
logical consequence (instead of canceling his fourth birthday party, asking him
to pay for new carpeting or grounding him from the car until his 18th
birthday). We woke Ilan up (he was fast
asleep before I put this whole puzzle together) and asked him to help us clean
the blue paint lines off the tile floors (we did the carpet ourselves since it
required more than just a sponge and some water). Ilan did not have pens, crayons, markers or
paints in his possession for quite awhile after that.
The lesson I learned?
Don’t leave my husband home to give the boys a bath. Send him to the store instead.
