Silence is Golden, and Red, Blue, Green...

I’m convinced that people who said that ‘Children should be seen and not heard’ didn’t live in modern times with toddlers, or they had no knowledge of my children. Silence around our home equates to Uh, oh!!!

The other morning my husband and I, mostly my husband, were both getting the older kids ready to send them out the door for school.

‘Where’s Hope?’ I asked to no one in particular.

‘Upstairs getting into Lea’s markers,’ replied Princess. If Hope would have been getting into Princess’s stuff I’m sure I would have heard about it. But currently Princess and Lea are on the outs because of, well I don’t know, maybe because they are sisters and sisters sometimes don’t get along.

‘What? You didn’t stop her, or come and tell me?’ I barked as I slowly, as not to aggravate my cough, scooted my way upstairs.

There I found Hope studiously working on her masterpiece; transforming the bed sheet into a pint size Picasso.

When she looked up and saw me she automatically as if rehearsed said, ‘Momma Messy, I sorry,’

Then she proceeded to give me biggest puppy dog eyes. Probably hopeing that I wouldn't notice the marker on her arms, shirt, bedpost and walls.

I turned right around and scooted slowly downstairs, as not to aggravate my cough, to get my camera. Then I went right back upstairs to film the crime scene. Someday I’ll compile a book of all the damage that my kids caused so that when my grandkids act up and my kids complain I can then show them pictures of what they did as children and laugh in their face, and tell them it serves them right. However in my case I was a perfect child, I blame everything nasty that they do on my husband’s childhood. Why must I be punished because of his childhood?

The good news to the story is that Lea has washable Crayola markers.

Permanent markers are under lock and key around our home. The bad news is that no matter how washable Crayola claims to be; well it still doesn’t wash off from flat paint.

My walls suck up the color of everything that hits them, food, boogers, markers, and I won’t name what else.

So far our first week of being unplugged from electronic entertainment has been exactly what we expected… more kid fights, more mischief, more messes like what my 11-year old did with this pen,

more boredom melt-downs. But that said, it also has given us a glimmer of what we want to see more of, like Abner picking up a real guitar and plucking out songs instead of Guitar Hero III on X-box, more creativity, more stories at bedtime, and more human interaction.

So I’ll take my noisy family any day. In our home noise is the norm. With hardwood floors it more often sounds like a gymnasium than anything else. When I hear them it’s much easier keeping tabs on what they are doing then when there is silence. I will agree on one thing. After bedtime, silence is golden, until I remember that sleep is just re-charging them for another day of noisy kid fun.