Graffiti Artist loose at the office.
I stepped into a meeting the other day and had a rude awakening.
Apparently while here with us at the office recently, my son – who can normally be left alone for periods of time while we work and draw and play quite nicely by himself, had gone and left his mark, quite literally, in pen, on some of our office chairs.
Exhibit A:
Don’t you love how SMALL he wrote his name? Like he totally KNEW he was being a complete punk?
But more so, don’t you love how the mind of a near-5 year old works? In that he wrote his own nickname, “Dex,” clearly indicating the culprit?
The least he could have done was write “Daddy” and try to shift the blame elsewhere.
Needless to say, he got into a shitload of trouble over it. We had a long talk about it. He felt like crap. When I asked him why he did it, he pulled the “I don’t know” card. (Mom, stop smirking). I told him if I could not get the stain off the chairs, he would have to help pay for a new chair. You should have seen his eyes when I told him how much a new chair costs. Bwaaa haaa haa! That will teach you for embarrassing me in the middle of an all-staff meeting, little buckarro!
The other punishment we came up with? Well, I usually try to have the punishment fit the crime, but we are so swamped we don’t have time for him come in and do hard time scrubbing chairs. So, I pulled the inverse.
The dreaded.
I took away his squeegee for a week.
Have I mentioned that my child is like a miniature Felix Ungar? And that every effing night he cleans our back window. With his beloved squeegee.
Don’t you love that it’s effective punishment for me to take away my kid’s CLEANING SUPPLIES?
Mess with the bull, kid… you get the horns.
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Can Dex teach my kid how to use those cleaning supplies? Would that be punishment enough? We have to resort to conventional punishment like no bike riding, no friend time and NO POWER RANGERS!
I’m sorry, I can’t stop laughing…
ohhhhhhhhh! declan misbehaved!!!!!!!!!
The part about the squeegee made me laugh out loud. I can’t stop giggling but only because I have an almost four year old who is also obsessed with cleaning. She loves Windex almost as much as I do. Almost.
I love the teensy weensy “dex” on the chair. that is HILARIOUS.
Let Dex know he can come squeegee my windows any time he wants:)))
Very cute.
FWIW – my kids like sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, and they fight over cleaning the toilets…
I want one of those cleaning obsessed kids. Where do I get one of those?
felix! oh dear.
Too funny. When Ellie was about 6 months old Abby told us Ellie wrote her name on the wall. Abby had written Ellie’s name on the wall behind the curtain..it didn’t even occur to her that we’d know it was her since it was her sister’s name.
OMG you and your son are priceless. Seriously. This is why this one of only two blogs that I read from beginning to end. Every f’ing time.
awesome.
Oh no! He might never help you clean again! 🙂
Tim LOVES to clean too.
So is his life long aspiration to stand on street corners and clean windows?
Seriously, would he come to my house and clean some windows for me? Only after he is punished of course.
You handled it really, really well.
I absolutely love how it never occurred to him to write something other than his name. Total lack of guile. And maybe he could pinch hit for your cleaner this week, huh?
Does he go to a Montessori school? Rumor is they train those kids up right!
Ah! But in taking away his squeegee, you are in turn punishing yourself. No clean windows for a week! AHHHHHHHH!
omg – I think it would be soooo hard to keep a straight face while providing proper parental discipline! You have such a great sense of humor. I did the same thing when I was little, except I wrote my brother’s name on the inside of a lampshade. Being the older one, he had convinced me he was ‘perfect’ and I thought he needed to get into trouble. Heheheh.
Next step is for him to learn to write “DEX WASN’T HERE” so he can feign complete innocence.
This is a clever kid. And, please, after he is done with his squeegie timeout can you send him my way with it in hand? There is lots of window washing work for him here!
That is just too damn funny.