Naughty, naughty!

Well, Abigail had her turn a little while ago coloring herself with a permanent marker, now it is Cody's turn. Yesterday during "quiet time" (which means movie time around here right now) I was trying to get some things done on the computer. Cody wasn't watching his movie, but I thought he was just playing with his toys and so I wasn't paying much attention to what he was doing. Then I saw him go past me and up the stairs, but he was kind of holding his hand so I wouldn't see it. I called him back down to me and sure enough he had green permanent marker on his hand. I asked him to bring me the marker and he went to get it, but said he couldn't find it. We went upstairs where he had been a few minutes before and I discovered that he had drawn on the windowsill in the bonus room. Still no marker though. Then we went into Cody's room and discovered that he had drawn on his book shelf, the door frame, his bed frame, and his wall. But, still no marker. We spent the next half hour scouring the upstairs for the marker so that this incident would not be repeated. Finally I looked in the drawer downstairs where all the pens/pencils are and there it was!

Now we had to figure out how to get permanent marker off of everything. We started with Cody's hand (and Abigail's hand which had also been colored on) using baby oil. Then we moved to the wall. After trying the baby oil, rubbing alcohol and WD-40 we discovered that bug spray with deet makes it melt away and you just wipe it off. Cody of course got to do the wiping. The rubbing alcohol took most of it off the metal bed frame. The bug spray took it partially off the window sill, but nothing has worked on the door frame. Guess we have some painting touch ups to do now.

Moral of the story: keep permanent markers out of reach until your children are twenty! (Okay maybe not that long, but you get the idea).