crayola disaster, Take II

Last night Eli was caught red-handed coloring our new floors with black crayon. He was punished, lectured, etc. I was telling my friend who was here to witness the incident that Cameron "never did stuff like that".
It was forgotton for the evening and this morning Cameron made a confession. "I colored on the floor." I was a little surprised, because as I mentioned Cameron has never been the destructive child. But not surprised at all because if in fact Cameron was coloring on the floor first, of course Eli would take over the task when abandoned by Cameron - because Eli copies his every move. And Eli has no inhibitions with regard to vandalism.

So I put both of them to work scrubbing the floors with washcloths. Which of course accomplished nothing, but maybe helped to teach a lesson. I didn't want to give them the Magic Eraser because I had received one of those emails about the horrors of burns on children from the Magic Eraser.

You know, the kind of email that makes you want to not even OWN them. But I do own them, because I owe the survival of my children to them for making these episodes relatively painless and forgivable and making me a much less angry mother.