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Monday, October 21, 2013

Homemade Horror

Mari was asleep in her bed. Cim was asleep in my bed... or so I thought.

Because she kept waking up her sister, Cim has been relegated to my bed for naptime. She's gotten in trouble several times for touching things on our headboard shelves, but she hadn't done it in awhile, and everything was oh-so-quiet... which would normally be a warning sign, but this time I thought it meant sleep, so I was busily working away on Halloween costumes.

Then Ryan came home, and at the sound of his voice, I suddenly heard sounds from the bedroom as well. We opened the door to find this.


All that's missing from this classic horror scene is the weapon.


Or maybe this white marble Chinese Medicine ball is the culprit? It carries fingerprints, at least.

What made this massive mess, you ask?


The contents of this little container. It's wax-based red ink we brought back from China, meant for use with Ryan's "chop," a stamp of his name cut from a piece of marble. I hadn't even realized it was in our room.


But I have a permanent reminder now.



Cim went straight to the tub of course...

Where we discovered she'd pulled her jeans up and painted herself a pair of red knee-highs.


Dawn dish soap helped some.


The tub, a spot on the counter (she climbed out of the tub and grabbed the white counter before we could catch her), the mattress, and several spots on the carpet are still bleeding waxy substance, no matter how hard we try to wipe them up (dry cloths work better than wet, due to the wax, but our stain removers are proving totally ineffectual). 

We tried really hard not to let her see us laughing when we first opened the door, but the more we got into the clean-up, the more we were holding in yells instead. This stuff is so bad. Because it won't just dry out and stain like a marker or something, if we step on a spot on the carpet, we spread it, and if we put new sheets on our bed, they'll pick it up from the mattress.

Chalk another one up for life experience. This day has won. We're exhausted.

15 comments:

  1. Oh no!!! Shannon that is an awful mess! I am so sorry! Placing a dry, absorbent cloth over the stains and then running a warm iron over it might help to wick it up :/. Good luck!

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  2. Oh, goodness! What a mess now but what a memory that will be laughed about for years! :)

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    1. It's true. Kind of like when I was a toddler and threw a large rock into the bathroom sink and broke it, or when I took a rock and traced it around the circumference of my parents' new car... (apparently rocks were my weapon of choice as a child.) I guess we all have those stories that will follow us into adulthood. That's one of the reasons I try to write down as many as I can of her awesome moments--so that she won't JUST have these crazy stories. ;-)

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  3. Oh my WORD!!! That is just awful. So sorry!!!!

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    1. Hopefully I'm a wiser mommy now. Next time things like that will go into a locked safe... ;-)

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  4. Bless ypu for not stinging her up by her toes. what a great mom and dad.

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    1. Haha, thanks Kathy. We worked really hard not to yell at her, but she did have to be thoroughly scrubbed, which she didn't enjoy, and she spent some quality time in her room.

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  5. oh my goodness! I have owned the same ink. It's kind of waxy, right? I think my kids used mine up too. That is hilarious/sad! I have pictures of when the boys were young. There's the one where Logan markered up Caleb's face. He looks cute in hot pink stripes.

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    1. This is Heather Woodbury (i'm using an account I don't use much)

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    2. Yeah, it's really waxy. I wouldn't have thought anything of that until my daughter found it, though! I bet the hot pink stripes were awesome. :-)

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  6. The iron over a dry cloth trick will probably be your best bet. That's how we got melted candle wax out of our carpet.

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  7. Oh Shannon! What a day! You were truly seeing red! Good luck with the clean up. I wonder if a magic eraser would work on the tub and counter?

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