Allie van Gogh

I am in the kitchen listening in on a "conversation" Allie and Kyla are having. I don't understand most of it, but I did catch the part when Allie sang, "I kissed a boy, it's not worth it." That made me smile. An experience we had two weeks ago with Allie didn't make any of us smile.

I was in bed and Jeff came in with a tiny bottle of yellow paint. It was empty. "Do you know what this is?," he asked.

"It's paint from Damon's art kit. Why?"

"Allie painted all over Kyla's crib with it. What should we do?" I was still in a stupor, having been woken up. I am not the most chipper gal first thing in the morning, and it takes me a few minutes to shake of the sleepies. I didn't know how to respond to that question. I was barely processing the fact that Allie had done something bad, and my brain had no room to come up with a consequence for her.

"I don't know." I rolled out of bed and went into the scene of the crime. Yes, even to someone half asleep, it was obvious that Allie had painted the crib (and parts of the wall and door) yellow.


I found a very sad girl in there, too. I put her up on the rocker and asked her what had happened. Finally, after many many tears and claims of, "I'm scared," she confessed.

"I woke up and saw the paint." The rest follows logically. It only makes sense that she needed to use the paint to change the color of the crib to match the crib sheet and blanket. Why was that so hard for me to understand?



I know she may look contrite, and you may wonder how on earth we could punish such a sad little girl, but we did. Actually, I did, because Jeff was long gone by this time. We spent the morning cleaning up (it did come off, thankfully, as it was washable paint designed for kids), and Allie spent a considerable amount of time in that rocker as I iced my hand down after the hardest spanking I had ever given her. That is, until a few days later when we battled over something else.

I think she learned her lesson. I hope so. Yesterday I found her in the bathroom washing something purple off her hands. I asked her what it was. She wouldn't tell me. But I found an open bottle of purple paint in my bedroom. Yes, she learned her lesson. Or I caught her early enough that she hadn't had time to paint my furniture.