Baby oil removes “permanent” marker marks from skin. How did I come to acquire this little tidbit of knowledge, you may ask? Because I have a 3, soon to be 4, year old, that’s how.

Yesterday morning, Pumpkin somehow managed to access my purse, which was hanging on a rather high coat rack. Seems the child has gotten taller since we hung the pegs on the wall, imagine that. Anyway, the little pickpocket found one of my Sharpies, lucky for all of us she found the pink one and not the black one.

I didn’t find out about the theft until I noticed the silence. That eerie silence that occasionally descends upon the House; the kind of silence you hear in old Westerns when the notorious gunfighter walks into the saloon; the kind of silence that usually only exists in libraries or funeral parlors; the kind of silence that always means a kid is up to no good. Mr. Prairie walked in and asked what Pumpkin was doing and I decided that I should find out. Together, we opened her door and peered in just as she threw something under a box, spun around, and yelled, “Nothing!”

When Pumpkin yells “Nothing!” you can bet that it’s something, and it’s never a good something. She had stashed my pink Sharpie under the box, after liberally applying said marker to her hands, arms, lips (just like lipstick!), and bellybutton. We didn’t immediately discover the bellybutton thing. Mr. Prairie called out from the back of the House, “Check her bellybutton!” I did, and she had. Why she is so fascinated with coloring in her bellybutton I will never know, but this not the first time she’s done it so it wasn’t exactly a surprise.

Getting the stuff off of her was quite a chore. Scrubbing didn’t work, fingernail polish remover didn’t work, lotion didn’t work. I was down to my last idea so I gave it a whirl. So if anyone ever asks you how to remove Sharpie marks from toddlers, tell them to try baby oil.

Then just a couple of hours later, while we were shopping in Big Warehouse Club, we got a call from Monkey’s school. The school nurse called and left me a voicemail telling me that he had been in an accident at recess. She said that his lip was split and swollen, but that he had already returned to class.

Monkey looked like the losing side in a prize fight. His sweet little upper lip was very swollen and red and there was blood on his clothes. He told us that he fell face first on the blacktop while engaged in a rousing game of something he and his little cronies call “Midnight Joker.” I’ve never been able to determine the exact rules of “Midnight Joker,” but it seems to involve climbing to the top of the tallest piece of playground equipment, throwing oneself off of it, and yelling, “I’m the midnight joker!” I hate that game. And now I’m mad at that song.

So I started a new tradition, when a child get hurt in school, he or she gets special treat. I took him to the store and let him pick out some candy.

This morning the last thing I said to Monkey when I dropped him off at his classroom was, “Be careful!” Apparently he didn’t listen.

When I picked him up this afternoon his teacher greets me with, “You are never going to guess what happened today. Monkey tripped in the classroom today, got a big scratch under his eye, and hurt his lip in a different spot!”

Today, I bought him some ice cream. If he does this for a third day in a row I’ll assume he’s doing it for the snacks.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Healthy Family, In front of the neighbors, Mother of Invention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.