Colourful Character

It's 10:00 pm. Do you know where your children are?

Well you should always know where your children are, for their safety, your safety and the safety of your stuff.

One particular evening though, we only thought we knew. We were all convinced in fact that young Aiden was fast asleep in bed. He sure looked asleep when we checked an hour before. Well....

At 10:01 he strolled into the living room where we were all sitting watching TV with one of those beautiful smiles on his face. He didn't look like a child that just stumbled out of bed for no particular reason. Nope. This was definitely the "I'm so happy to see you." smile that usually follows the "I just did something pretty special, don't you agree?" smile.

A cursory inspection of him revealed marker stains on his hands, face and pyjamas. Once more we dove headlong into the tasks; to locate the problem and begin the cleanup.

The problem turned out to be a box of washable (thank goodness) markers that had been colouring some scrap cardboard and soaked right through the boxboard to kid#3's light blue comforter below. The markers had all been recapped and neatly put back into their packaging. Now if it had all remained on a single piece of paper it would have been framable art. The bright colours blended beautifully together into a truly lovely piece of art that even Monet would have appreciated. Too bad it was in such an inconvenient place... namely the comforter.

In case you find yourself in the same position sometime, don't place the comforter on the carpet to try to scrub away the marker. Trust me, it isn't the smartest idea I've ever had. Thankfully it came off the carpet and the comforter without leaving a trace. (Thank you to whoever invented washable markers.) Only Aiden still had marker stains on him the next day.