Don't Trust Anyone Under 3 Foot Tall

It has been a long day here, preceded by a long week.

In short, Evelyn has been a tyrant.  I have never cleaned up more messes made by her in my life (well, except for when she was potty-training).

To start though, as you read about all these fab-u-lous messes, you may be wondering how in the world she was able to do these things with me in the house.

Evelyn in very independent.  And I love it.  From the time she was a baby, I have always let her play independently when she wanted to.  She can play upstairs on her own if she wants to.  She can play in the backyard by herself when it's warm if she wants to. She usually stays on the main floor though wandering around being all kinds of creative.  I love stealing a glance at her making up stories and games for herself.  She doesn't do these things if I'm in the room with her.  That, and I hate the idea of helicopter parenting.  It's just not my thing to hover over my kids all day.

You, my lovely readers, are welcome to disagree with me on this one.  And you'll probably have less messes to clean up.  I'm questioning this philosophy myself today.

Here's a summary of our week:

Monday - dumped a whole plate of scrambled eggs all over the living room rug so that Bella could share them with her.  Have you ever tried to clean smooshed eggs out of carpet?  It's a new kind of fun.

Tuesday - She had a friend over and the two of them wandered upstairs.  The friend's mother and I headed up there after a little while to see what they had found to entertain themselves with.  The answer: water, lotion, soap, and lipstick all over the bathroom.  Awesomeness.

Wednesday - She decided she wanted to play with eggs.  So she got REAL EGGS out of the fridge and began cracking and cooking them in her kitchen.  This was followed later by dumping a bottle of kombucha all over the same kitchen set (some made it in the intended pot) because she wanted to make it like mommy does.

Thursday - The day started with the finding of a Sharpie.  She colored her feet and hands with it.  Not that big of a deal all things considered.  She later found the same Sharpie on the table.  She colored her magnets, a Leap Frog toy, her monitor, her horses, the rug, and her fabric chair.  I'm not sure what I would do without Google in attempting to figure out how in the world to clean it off of that many surfaces.

While getting Bella up from her morning nap I came downstairs to find her squirting water out of the wipes solution bottle all over a wooden puzzle.  She knows that bottle is off limits.

While cleaning up that mess and changing Bella's diaper, she went in the kitchen and emptied the completely full salt shaker all over her kitchen set.  No joke.

While I was vacuuming that up she went back in the living room and was shaking water out of a sippy cup all over the living room.  I'm not kidding you, I was completely losing it by this point.

We had a heart-to-heart about making messes.  I thought we had a breakthrough.  She happily spent the next hour playing with Bella while I made a batch of yogurt.

I have my hair in a ponytail today though and she decided she wanted one too.  She headed upstairs to get a rubberband.  I reminded her not to make any messes or get into mommy's stuff.  A minute (literally) later she wasn't back downstairs, so I headed up to check on what was going on.

My bottle of hair cream was squirted all over a rubbermaid container and into the bathtub.  The whole bottle.  I kid you not.  I lost it.  She got to sit on a chair watching me as I cleaned it all up and tried to keep the volume of my voice down while I explained that this was NOT OK.

Thankfully at this point it was time for lunch and nap.  I fed her and we headed upstairs amidst her telling me she wasn't tired.  I responded, "I don't care Evelyn.  Mommy is tired and needs a break, you WILL take a nap."

She is now soundly sleeping and I may or may not be eating a bag of chocolate chip cookies.