Painting Woes

May 30, 2009

Our first day of summer vacation according to some, but not to me. I thought it would be a good idea to get some work done on this Saturday so that we could begin Summer Break with Fun on Monday. Instead, all I wanted to do was skip Summer all together and put all the kids in far-away boarding schools...

Our swing set was pretty ragged when we moved in 8 years ago. After 8 years of snow, rain, sun, wind, construction, and kids, it has become really pathetic. I thought we could use some red paint left-over from our "remodel" to perk it up a bit and reduce splinters. I also thought it would be nice to have the children assist in the painting. I gathered all of the supplies together and found old clothing for the kids to wear. I had a couple of quick things to attend to inside before we could start painting. However, I must have made it all too clear that there would be NO FUN until our work was done, because for the first time ever in our household the children actually went to work without me driving them to do it. Unfortunately, this was BAD.
One of the little things I attended to was Nathan. His pull-up was oozing all up his back and down his legs. I had picked him up to bathe him upstairs. While he was in the bath and I was cleaning up his soiled clothes, Rilla had a diaper explosion of her own. She also required a bath. Her clothes needed scrubbing. Laundry needed to be started. The washing machine needed to be emptied, the drier emptied, the sink emptied for Rilla's bath. The floor where she'd been playing needed to be scrubbed. She then thought she was hungry. I fed her. When she was settled, Nathan was rescued from the tub and dressed. I began to walk downstairs to collect some toys to entertain Rilla outside while we would work.

To my horror two of my girls came inside yelling & arguing. I quickly noticed red paint dripping down the hair of one daughter, and red paint covering arms, legs, feet, and NEW clothes (not the old ones I'd set out for them to wear) of both girls. Nathan began demanding chocolate milk and his turn to paint. I started to cry as Ray came in and wanted me to see how great his work (on some other project) was going--completely oblivios to all I'd been dealing with. I rudely told him he'd have to wait. I told both girls to take off their shoes immediatly (before tracking paint all over the house) and get into the tub. I threw the baby at Ray and sat Nate on a high stool that he can't get off of. I followed the girls up to the bath expressing my frustration at the mess and their lack of following instructions. As they bathed and flooded my bathroom floor (for me to mop up later) and left paint residue on my tup (which I scrubbed off later), my other two children came in whining about the heat....and how they were NOT going to paint any more.

Somehow, one little girl got dressed in another nice outfit and ruined it with paint before I noticed. I listened to more argument about how so and so didn't do as much...blah...blah...blah...as I took inventory of the paint brushes in the sink filled with red water. I tried to sweet talk the oldest into finishing what she'd started promising that I would be there to finish. "NO," was all I got. I banned the other kids from the back yard for the next 24 hours--not to allow the paint to dry, but to prevent them from making a bigger mess.

Ray asked me what I'd like his next project to be, I softly suggested he could finish painting the swing-set. "NO!"

So, our swing set will set half done until we have time to forget how utterly terrible the first attempt went. We did not have FUN on Monday. They were all assigned inside chores. I counted my blessings that Nathan did not get to the paint. :) It could have been much worse.