Caught Pink-Handed

Thursday night I was making dinner.  The boys all went downstairs to color.  I thought nothing of it.

I should have.

See, there were markers involved.  I went downstairs and discovered this.

Marks ALL OVER the chair, the (newly cleaned) carpet, and the ottoman.  Trust me, the pictures don't do it justice.

I asked Spencer who did it.  He claimed not to know, and that he didn't see anyone do it.  He tried to make me feel better by letting me know that the marker was the washable kind.

It didn't make me feel better.  In fact, it made me feel madder. 

I asked Josh who did it.  He claimed (and still claims) that it most definitely was NOT HIM.  Did he see anyone else do it?  No.

I asked Cole who did it.  He just grinned and clung to my legs.  The boy wasn't gonna give anyone up.

I was in the middle of making dinner, so I couldn't clean it up just then, but I could definitely stew about it, and stew about it I did.  Cole came up and started to 'help', and by help I mean make a mess.  As I was cleaning him up I realized that his hands and clothes didn't have a single pink marker mark.  I've never met a toddler who didn't color themselves with markers when playing with them.  It's just against their nature.

Then I decided to check Josh's hands.  This is what I found.

 

AHA!!  Pink marker all over them! 

I presented the facts and the logic to him.  Still he refused to admit he had any part of it.  I asked Spencer point-blank if Josh had done it.  (I figured if anyone would rat on Josh it would be Spencer.)  He still claimed ignorance.

Then I looked at the marks again.  Some of them really looked like the marks of a toddler; but others looked like the deliberate drawings of a four year old.  Perhaps it was the work of a team...  But no one was fessing up and no one was ratting on their brother.  I decided I would probably never know the real culprit(s).

Which is why I made all three of them help clean it up after dinner.

You can imagine how well that went over.  Much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.   And that was mainly from Lance and I, because you can imagine how much fun it was to get the boys to actually do any work.  But hopefully it was unpleasant enough for the boys to prevent it from happening again any time soon.

That, and I've commandeered all  the markers.