all marked up

We have need for establishing a marker-free zone at our house. I’m seriously considering banishing the tools of color for good - mainly because the color is ending up everywhere but on paper.

Boy #3 has been at it again. But, before I cast all the blame at his feet, I should note that Boy #1 and Boy #2 have a bad habit of leaving temptation out in colors like electric lime, blue lagoon and infra red where eager hands can grab them and run. They are at least partly at fault for the condition of our home.

A few days ago, I wandered into the boys’ bedroom (not by choice - I generally try to avoid it unless absolutely necessary). A sheepish little boy greeted me at the door with about seven markers uncapped and ready for war. Apparently, part of the battle had already taken place.

Purple streaks covered the table and chairs that I had laboriously painted for Boy #1’s third birthday. (That was five years ago). The set had somehow managed to survive the first two hooligans with little to no major damage. But that had all changed now. All the cute little lettering and stars I had painted on the top was graffitied over by scribbles. The chairs had the same matching streaks down the legs and across the back. Next to the table, on the wall (which was previously a nice shade of sage green) were more lines and swirls of varying colors. Even the light switch didn’t escape being vandalized.

I closed the door and nearly jumped out of my skin. The backside of the door was covered in a two-foot patch of colorful sketches only a two-year-old could make.

But, it didn’t stop there. His brother’s closet door had scribbles. The floor had scribbles. The two-year-old himself had scribbles up and down his arms and on the sides of his face.

He received a mighty good lecture, a little discipline (okay maybe a lot). And then I attempted to scrub off his marker job. Nothing worked. Soap. Water. Elbow Grease. Comet. All it did was fade the colors somewhat; the stains refused to budge.

Each boy received a good talking to and I thought the matter was resolved until I went to clean up the living and dining room a few days later.

My brand-new red tablecloth now sports blue lines on one corner. The off-white carpet has an attractive turquoise splotch in front of the TV cabinet. I found another spot of the same color next to one of the end tables.

None of these stains came clean 100 percent. The only thing this child colored that managed to come clean was his tongue. He decorated that with a black marker, but his mouth looked good as new after lunch that day. (Where’s the justice in that - I almost found myself hoping he’d get marker poisoning, or at least a slight case of indigestion).

Instead, I’m left with a room to repaint. The only way to solve the problem is to brush Kilz (a stain blocker) over the offending marks and then paint. Without the stain blocker, the marker marks will bleed right through any new paint.

Actually, my life isn’t all that different.

I get myself and my life all blotched up with marker marks – some visible, others not. Words. Actions. Thoughts. Anything I do that I’m not supposed to do and ought to know better than to do.

The result is discoloration on myself or sometimes even on others. Then I can’t remove the stains. I can try to scrub and scour myself, but it generally isn’t much more effective than to white wash what’s there or perhaps fade a stain a bit. I then kid myself that it isn’t any more noticeable than the faded purple streaks my son left on his bedroom walls.

There’s only one way out of it. It’s not a terribly easy way either if I can’t admit that I’ve got marks.

I need a real stain blocker. Something that will prevent the marks from showing up again. Ever. Period. Then, I need a fresh coat of paint to look new again. It’s a little process called forgiveness that can clean me up. My stain blocker is blood red and available 24-7. It literally does “kill” the marks.

Guess I shouldn’t be so hard on a two-year-old who’s doing nothing more than I did at his age. I actually distinctly remember drawing stick people with big fists on the back of my brother’s dresser. Mom said when I learned to write my name, they found it everywhere in the house – on walls, on furniture and probably even on my brothers.

Maybe this son will be the creative one of the bunch. In the meantime, I better stock up on paint.

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You’ll think I’m making this up, but sadly it’s true. As I was finishing up the last lines of this column, I heard the boys yelling at their little brother. You guessed it - #3 struck again. I had taken the market bucket out to find the names of those cool marker colors and told #2 he could draw a picture with them.

Big mistake.

Boy #3 got a hold of a black marker and promptly colored both of his palms. He then invented a new form of finger painting by wiping the black marker on my living rooms walls, a yellow chair and a white pillow. By the time I had reached him, he also had black streaks on his sweatshirt, his cheeks and over his eyes when he tried to hide his face.

The good news? Somehow, this time he chose a WASHABLE marker! What a great invention! I’m guessing the creator also had a Boy #3 at home.

boy oh boy!

As of February 1, I am officially the mother of four boys. Gulp. That even looks tough on paper.

Number four arrived fashionably on time (on his due date), but I really would have appreciated an early appearance.

The two older boys were thrilled to have a brother, but only because the boys would then outnumber the girls on the Larson side. They seem to think only in terms of wrestling and beating up the girls and can’t quite comprehend that by the time this one is old enough to fight, his girl cousins will be graduating from high school.

The former baby of the family has not been so excited about the new addition. He hasn’t pulled any two-year-old stuff like poking baby’s eyes or trying to smother him (although I’ve kept a close eye on him, just in case). Instead, he has become a master of the word “No!” and has been almost unbearably stubborn. Any time he gets disciplined for calling me “stupid” or “dumb,” he then insists that it’s all my fault. Logic of a two-year-old is interesting.

Thankfully, this baby has been our calmest by far. He eats, sleeps, poops and burps and spends the rest of the time wide awake, observing the chaos that constantly surrounds him.

I wonder if he’ll stay calm forever, or if he’s simply taking it all in, waiting for his chance to prove “anything you can do, I can do better,” which seems to be the motto around our place.

I’ve already pulled out “Bringing up Boys” - Dr. Dobson’s Bible on male children to re-read. Pretty sure that it will have to be kept out for permanent reference as I muddle through this raising boys business. My only complaint is that there are no chapters in the book about how to cope with never-ending laundry piles, potting training boys who dribble on the floor, and how to keep boys from biting each other.

Maybe I need to write my own book - a mother of boys survival guide. Between all the noise, the competition, the outrageous amounts of food they eat and the toys they accumulate, there has got to be a silver lining somewhere. If not, perhaps I can make some money selling my new-found and hard-learned expertise.

I probably wouldn’t know what to do with a girl baby anyway, so perhaps in a way God’s looking out for me. One more male in this already testosterone-overloaded house isn’t going to make much of a difference.

Hopefully, those future daughter-in-laws will thank me some day that I forced my boys to eat (of all things!) tomatoes, onions, sweet potatoes and sauerkraut. I know I’m grateful my hubby isn’t picky about what he eats.

I’m also hoping they’ll appreciate boys who aren’t shy about singing to strangers, too embarrassed to wear patched jeans, love vegetables, adore their grandparents, are polite enough to say thank you, but not uptight enough to keep from burping out loud and laughing about it. They (so far) seem to enjoy the few chores we make them do. (We even discovered that #2 actually likes to sweep the floor and wash dishes!! Believe me, we’re taking full advantage of that.) They aren’t easily bored and can watch “The Incredibles” five times in a row without going nuts. The only one going nuts is me, when they argue about who has what super-powers as they chase each other around the house.

For some reason that I haven’t figured out yet, we’ve been chosen to have four boys. So far it seems to be working. I’m still somewhat sane. The washing machine still works. The vacuum cleaner didn’t self-destruct after sucking up a Lincoln Log last week. And, I’ve got plenty of hand-me-downs for boy #4.

Now if I could just get some sleep...