It was too quiet, way too quiet. The two boys, a toddler of three years and a baby about to turn one next week, were in the bedroom. They were playing and giggling just a moment or two ago. Now it was quiet. Something was up. I had been a parent long enough to know that quiet was not good. Kids equal noise, and that is a good thing. Quiet means something else. It means trouble.
As I walked around the corner into the bedroom, I braced myself for the worst. What did they manage to get into this time? There they were, sitting quietly in the middle of the floor. The first thing I noticed was an ink pen in the hand of the toddler. Oh crap! A wave of toddler doodle art flashed across my imagination. Which wall was covered in it?!
The baby look up at me with a sheepish little grin. All I could do was smile back. He was the one covered from head to toe in toddler doodle art. The black ink lines criss-crossed his forehead, around the eyes, over the checks and chin in a style reminiscent of a badly drawn Spider-Man mask. The intricate network of lines meandered around the arms and hands, to under the half-pulled up shirt and the belly, down and around the legs to the feet and about seven toes. I was amazed that he had sat there long enough for his brother to create this masterpiece on him.
The toddler was beginning to replicate his work on his own legs when he looked up at me with a look of mixed emotions—half a smile of pride as to say, look Daddy at what I did, and half of an uh-oh that showed that he was not sure if this had not been such a good idea.
I gently removed the pen from the toddler’s hand. The baby watched intently as if it was going to be his turn to draw. In hindsight, I should have taken a picture first, but instead I picked up the baby and said to the toddler something about getting some paper for him to create his next Picasso.
A bath was the last thing on my list to try to clean this mess up. As with any typical father, I looked for a shortcut. The first thing to pop into mind just happened to contain a secret industrial-strength cleaner—baby wipes. The ink disappeared lickety-split. The hard part was trying to keep the little squirmy worm still long enough to finish the job. Besides, it was time for a diaper change any way.