Tuesday, March 11, 2008

A colorful week




So this Thursday, I wanted to take a shower really badly, and Isaiah was happily coloring printouts of Thomas and Friends and his little picnic table. He usually gets strapped into his high chair when he's coloring, so I was proud to see him sitting down like such a big boy with his crayons. Since he was so content, I figured it was as good a time as any to pop into the bathroom. He stayed happy the entire time I was in the shower, and I was able to relax in the warm water without worrying about him. When I came out a few minutes later, I heard him playing upstairs, so I went right up to check on him. He was happily kicking balls around his room, still holding the orange crayon from his coloring time downstairs, and he was so happy to see me he gave me a big hug. I scooped him up and plopped him on the bed for some tickles. After a few more minutes of playing, Isaiah started coloring on his hand with the orange crayon. It wasn't actually making any marks, but I told him that we don't color on hands, only paper. He looked a little surprised at this news and repeated it,
"No color hands?"
"That's right, buddy, we don't color on our hands."
Then a few minutes later, he poised the orange crayon over his sheets, ready to color on them.
"Nope, sweetie - we don't color on the bed, only on paper."
"No color bed?"
"That's right. We only color on paper."
A dawning looking appeared on his face, and he quietly asked me,
"No color table?"
"Right, sweetie, we don't color on the table, only on paper."
I was pretty impressed that he had used his deductive reasoning on that one when he asked, a little more quietly,
"No color chair?"
"That's right, no coloring on the chair - only paper."
Then he asked, in an even more quiet voice,
"No color slide?"
"That's right, we don't color on the slide either - just paper."
I was still pretty impressed that he was extrapolating the 'only paper' rule to include all these things when he said in a tiny voice,
"No color house?"
"Um, yeah sweetie - we only color on paper."
"Oh," he said rather sadly and looked down. That's when I finally realized I should go downstairs and check things out. Indeed, he had colored on the table, chairs, plastic slide, and the walls of our house. Oh.

Luckily I had been smart enough to give him washable crayons (even if I was dumb enough to leave him alone with them in the first place) so the marks came off with a few wipes of a wet paper towel. I honestly wasn't even a little mad. I realized that we hadn't talked too much about what not to color on, because I had never left him alone with a set of crayons and a tempting house/palate to color on. I just told Isaiah it was time to clean up the colors and gave him his own paper towel. It doesn't even count as a consequence because Isaiah loves to clean and thinks it's a game. Maybe I should have disciplined him more, but I feel like it was more of a learning experience (for both of us) than a rebellion. So, we wiped up blue, orange, and brown crayon marks and then put the crayons away for the day and kept on playing. I guess next time I take a shower, I will have to think of a different activity.

The next morning we were all heading out of the house bundled up in layers because it was absolutely freezing (far below freezing, to be more precise.) We walked out our back door to head to the garage with Michael carrying Isaiah and me carrying Michael's coffee. I had just shut the door behind me when Michael called, "Hey honey, I don't have the keys." Oh shoot! I looked frantically through my diaper bag hoping against hope that I had the spare set of keys in there, but despite the fact that my diaper bag houses more than Mary Poppins' bag, the keys just weren't there. Michael called his brothers to see if either of them had the spares we thought we had handed out, but no such luck. By this time Isaiah was crying because the cold was so terrible and biting that our faces and ears all hurt. I removed my scarf and we wrapped it around the exposed parts of Isaiah's face. Then we booked it to a coffee shop two blocks down to hang out in the warmth while we tried to figure out what to do.

Eventually, Michael's brother Peter drove out and the two of them headed back to our house to try and pick the lock, (which didn't work,) and call a locksmith. Meanwhile, Isaiah and I stayed at the coffee shop where he could walk around and stay out of the cold. We were there for over two hours, and even though they had several books and toys to keep him entertained, he got restless and antsy after being there so long. A nice older gentleman noticed Isaiah was getting bored with my entertainment tactics, so he reached into his bag, pulled out a folksy wooden recorder and began to play. Isaiah was immediately enthralled and walked over to the man's table to check it out. The man obligingly played for him, and then reached into his bag a pulled out another, smaller recorder. He played on that one too for a moment so Isaiah could see how it worked, and then, he quickly wiped the mouthpiece on his shirt and handed it to Isaiah, who immediately stuck it into his mouth. It happened so quickly, I couldn't have stopped it if I had wanted it to. The guy just encouraged Isaiah to blow into it to make some music, which Isaiah did as I thought desperately of my Clorox wipes in the diaper bag across the room. Then Isaiah handed it back, and the guy stuck it back into his own mouth, while I sat there dumbfounded and unsure of what to do. I mean, this man was entertaining my son and being extremely kind...but ew! Isaiah definitely had a cold, which he probably passed onto the guy, and I had no idea what the guy was harboring that he passed onto Isaiah. It was all water under the bridge at that point in time, though, so I just fixed a smile on my face and went on with the morning. Oh, and we did eventually get into our home and Michael got to work only 2 1/2 hours late. Isaiah was no worse for the wear, and so far hasn't come down with any strange diseases from Mr. Recorder.

The pictures are from a photo shoot at our dining room table. Isaiah will make faces on command to entertain Michael and I, so we called out "happy face," "angry face," and "surprise face," while we snapped pictures. It's a pretty great party trick. (He also does sleepy face, silly face, yucky face, and sad face.)

4 comments:

Andrea Frazer said...

Which face was the "eww, you gave me old recorder eeebie geebie germs?"

Too funny.

Great shots.

Steph said...

This is such a sweet story. Thank goodness for washable crayons! Thanks for dropping by my blog and for your supportive comment.

Evenspor said...

I did the same thing once - leaving my son with crayons while I took a shower. Fortunately, the only think it occured to him to color on was the tile floor - easy to clean. Since then I have invested in a lot of Mr Clean magic erasers. Just in case. ;)

At least he understood once you explained to him, though. That is pretty impressive. My parents like to tell about my older brother who liked coloring on the walls when he was little. They taped big sheets of paper all along the walls for him to color on. He would come along and lift up the paper to color on the wall underneath. :p

Christine said...

I hear you on the washable crayons. I am such a "washable only" addict, that I have to inspect all the art gifts given to the kids. I don't say anything at the time, but if they aren't washable, I put them away to be used when the kids are much older.

I get the whole shower thing too. Don is here in the mornings except in the summer, so right now it's easy. In the summer I will have to try to get up earlier than the kids to shower and somehow not wake them up. Hopefully, Emily will be sleeping through the night by then. Right now, it is REALLY hard to get up early. I envy people who can do that so effortlessly.

Beautiful story! Always enjoy your blog.