The Queen's Rambles

This girl is going to drive me to drink. She’s three and we all know Three is one of the worst ages. Except for Six. Or I assume Twelve through Twenty-One. But I would hope to god that a Thirteen year old wouldn’t pry open a can of paint with her bare fingers in middle of the living room. GAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

So that happened.

Last week she made a mess of the walls in her room, so I’ve spackled over all the patches where she peeled the paint off down to the drywall. I bought a quart of color matched paint, and started sanding things down yesterday. While I was upstairs sanding, I heard a thunk and then Elsa started crying hysterically. I heard Mike cursing, then screaming “We’ve got a problem, we’ve got a problem!” I was yelling “Do I need to call 911” as I trucked it down the stairs.

Then I saw it.

A whole quart of paint dumped out on my living room floor. Elsa crying hysterically on the couch. Erik looking on in shock.

We didn’t even have time to deal with Elsa. We both got down on the floor and started scooping the paint up with our hands. It was expensive and I needed it to fix her room!

We managed to pour about half a quart back into the can. Mike used the steamer to get the rest of it up. It took him nine rounds to get the water to run clear. We are both surprised it came up so well, but I guess those steamers are amazing and we did it while the paint was still wet.

So how the fuck did she get it open? I saw the guy use a mallet to close up the paint can. I guess she is just determined. It was a miracle that she didn’t get a single drop on her clothes. I still don’t understand how that happened.

While Mike was cleaning, I went and did the painting. The color matches pretty well, but if you look closely you can tell it is a slightly different color. The main problem: I don’t know how many coats of paint it is going to take to get rid of the crayon! I thought I’d just paint over it instead of magic erasing it. Sounded like a lot simpler, less intense option. It looked fine last night, but now that the paint is dry it is still clearly showing through. Turns out it would have been a lot less work intensive to just scrub it off. Now I’ll have to paint over it who knows how many times, cleaning my supplies between each painting (since it will have to dry).

I was truly hoping this problem of her writing on the walls was coming to an end since I took away all the crayons and offered Erik a bounty for any crayon he found and brought to me. She has also promised me that she won’t write on the walls anymore (not that I take the promise seriously).

Guess what? She found a dark blue crayon somewhere and wrote letters all over the wall behind the couch. GRRRRRRRR!!!!

I swear we supervise her! Obviously not nearly enough. It is definitely a lot harder to keep an eye on her since we are living in a three story townhouse instead of living in a small apartment like we did when Erik was this age.