This Will Be Funny One Day, Right? RIGHT?!?!?!

(Originally posted at Rational Jenn)

So one of the things we did while Brendan's family was in town was paint Morgan's room pink! She's been making do with the old green walls of the nursery, and the zoo animal wallpaper border, and a mish-mash of furniture new and old. (Sean's room will be our current guest room, so he's not in the old nursery.)

Tuesday was wet and rainy, our family brought old clothes and so we got a nice shade of pink paint from Home Depot and went to work! It's very pretty and I plan to touch up tonight.

So anyway, the kids were upstairs and quiet this afternoon--too quiet. I called up, "Whatcha doing?" Both of them, "Nothing!"

Suspicious, I headed upstairs with the baby. Ryan, obviously anticipating the next scene, tells me, "Morgan's painting her carpet." and skedaddled.

W. T. F.

Sure enough, I walk in to Morgan's room to discover her covered with pink paint, holding a dripping paint brush over her carpet. A glance at the paint can revealed the extra roller brush (sans roller) bobbing up and down in the paint can like the Titanic.

I didn't yell. (Go me!) I was, however, extremely upset, and a few oh-no-oh-noes escaped my lips.

Morgan burst into tears, dropped the paint brush and ran from the room. Sean, who is Mr. Emotional Mirror lately, also bursts into tears. I nearly did.

I got Morgan in the tub and washed off her hair, and she was screaming and sobbing, "Ryan told me to do it!" I gently reminded her that she is in charge of her own body and that she can always tell Ryan NO.

I called Ryan up and asked him if he told her to do it. "No," says he, "I think she misunderstood me. I told her NOT to paint her carpet." He repeated this a couple of times.

Now this is plausible. But I smelled a rat. So I told him, sitting on the bathroom floor, holding Sean, Morgan still wailing in the bathtub, "I need to know what's true. I'm going to give you one chance to tell me what the truth is, and I promise I won't get mad. Well--any madder than I already am--I'm pretty upset right now. But . . . if you tell me a lie right now, and then later I find out that you lied to me, well then I will be VERY upset, way more upset than I am right now. So I need you to tell me what really happened because I want to believe and trust you."

He stared at me for a second and then said, "Okay. What I said before was a lie and I want to tell you the truth now. I told Morgan that I thought she might like pink carpet and I told her to paint it."

And I didn't get mad. I kept my promise. (Go me again!)

I thanked him for telling him the truth, explained to both of them that wall paint does not come off of carpets the way kid paint does, and told them we'd figure something out. I gave them both a hug (Morgan got me all wet), and then put Ryan in charge of Sean while I went to inspect the damage.

It is everywhere and pretty much dried up. Sigh. Also, the walls were smeared in random spots (I fixed those as best I could with the still dripping paint brush).

So, what do we do--a creative use of rugs? Some of it we can cover up with furniture, but some we can't--right in front of the closet.

Funny one day, yes? :o) I must be feeling better because I can kind of see a glimmer of humor about it as I type.

Oh well. Even though this was kind of a disaster, I think I did some things right--I didn't yell. I did show how upset I was in an appropriate way--and even though Morgan got so sad, I think it's good for them to see that this made me mad. I got Ryan to tell me the truth and told him I was proud of him for telling me the truth. I explained about the difference between wall paint and kid paint.

And Morgan's room is just a leeeetle bit pinker than we had intended.