The good, the bad, the gross

So in addition to the good news that Caroline finished her Kindergarten reading program yesterday, we also had bad and gross to add to it.

The bad was that the girls decided to be little artists in Caroline's room with a ballpoint pen. They seriously must have colored on twenty items in her room. Big circles on the wall, scribles on various items like the pillow, comforter, and sheet of the bed, tracing the base of Caroline's nutcracker on the dresser, marks on all the play table and chairs, the baby high chair, the babycrib, the bookcase and a large bouncy ball. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall.

The worst thing about it was that Caroline lied. We really suspected Charlotte initially, and Caroline's blame backed us up. We even held her up to one part to confirm her reach was long enough. So we disciplined Charlotte. But the more we thought about the scribbles during dinner, the more we realized that Caroline had to have done them too. We prodded her and prodded her and she insisted it was Charlotte. As rookies at this lying thing, we just weren't sure how to proceed. Then, thankfully, after dinner Caroline came upstairs while I was cleaning and confessed to lying. And it was at that point that I found her name written on the bookcase - which she amazingly was still trying to pin on her little sister.

So we disciplined her for the coloring and the lying. I also had her do some copywork on Proverbs 12:22 and the rules to coloring.

I think Kevin and I were both so frustrated and appalled about the whole thing. This may have been on of our first times to really have to consult in private to figure out how to handle something. But we tried to keep in mind that this was totally out of character so as to not overreact. Truthfully, my initial thought was to take every item that she'd colored on out of her room. And in hindsight, I really wonder how much Charlotte could have done.

Oh well, it's all behind us now and all is forgiven. I do need to get another Magic Eraser to finish the cleanup.

And then the cherry on top is the gross... Charlotte pooped in the bathtub. Sigh. At least I was already using bleach to clean stuff.