Speaking of stickers…..

47 Responses for "Speaking of stickers….."

1. Karen July 20th, 2009 at 6:20 pm 1

   Lauren, THANK YOU! for sharing that!!!!! My six year old came out of his room about a week ago, around ten o’clock at night (obviously he wasn’t sleeping…his light was off, but definitely not sleeping!) with his hands and face covered in black marker!!!! We attempted to help him wash up….of course it only removed the top layer. And the next day, I saw that his scribbling had extended to a beautiful wooden safe/piggy bank that his late grandfather made him (my poor hubby’s face went about ten shades of pale…..it was from his father), the sheet and bed skirt on his bed. Thankfully, the marker came off the piggy bank and after a couple of days, wore off of his face….so no permanent damage. In the future, I hope to help guide his creativity to daylight hours and on more appropriate surfaces! :>:> Thank you for your post reminding me that thinking outside the box, so to speak, is common to this age!! And as for your kidlet, at least there are products like Un-Du!!! :>:>:>

2. Karen July 20th, 2009 at 6:22 pm 2

   Oh yea…..and it looks like your boy has a creative knack for coloring like his Mama!! At least he is proud of all of his creations….as he should be! :>:>:>

3. Gina July 20th, 2009 at 6:36 pm 3

   OH MY GOSH, Lauren! I think you and my 5 y/o or my 3.5 y/o must be related – because what you did on that car is TOTALLY something Nin or Annie would do!

   My 3.5 y/o recently decided she wanted to decorate their room. With a black Sharpie. {sigh} I am going to be working in there this week to repaint that wall…

4. Wendy M July 20th, 2009 at 6:52 pm 4

   Lauren, Thanks for sharing your story.

   Just keep reminding yourself that there are more important things and that he is just trying to be creative and follow in your footsteps.
   Laughing always helps too, so….

   This reminds me of the time my dad decided to “clean ” my room for me. I always had a HUGE mess! Dad decided to throw everthing out my windows and onto the drive…and I do mean everything! (my bedrm was on the 3rd floor) I had to pick up each thing…one at a time, and return it to the correct spot in my room. It took me about 7 hours going up and down all those steps, around the house and out to the drive. I guess the bad thing about it was that it really didn’t help! (Poor Dad)

   I have 2 children of my own now and I really don’t stress about their rooms. (even though it drives my husband INSANE!) It’s just not worth it to me.
   They do a major clean up about once a week and especially when Grandpa comes for a visit!

   Love your blog!

5. Kristy July 20th, 2009 at 6:53 pm 5

   I love Noah’s “creativity”. At least he had a reasonable explanation and seemed to genuinely think that what he did was a good thing. You’ll laugh when you look back at the pictures in the future and just imagine showing them to Noah’s girlfriends when he grows up! Okay, so anyway, I had to join in for this one….when I was growing up, we always went to my grandpa’s house every Saturday and had dinner, played with the cousins, and talked. Well, I would go in the bathroom and hide the toilet paper roll. My grandpa would always put out a new one and would say that he couldn’t believe the first was used up. Well, I’d go hide the second one. I just put them in the laundry basket…completely innocent. Well, everyone wanted to know who was hiding the toilet paper so my mom lined all of us kids up in front of the fireplace and asked each of us pointblank. I grew up with all boy cousins so they never thought it was me. I couldn’t lie to my mom though and when she asked if I had done it, I had to say yes. Everyone was shocked. I thought it was hilarious though :).

6. Emily July 20th, 2009 at 7:45 pm 6

   I can imagine how you felt… but I think you handled it well. Great idea about the binder.

   Bless you Lauren – you’re such a great mom. I’m going to have to keep this story tucked…. sounds like something my dad walked into when I TACKED all the posters/pictures of Shaun Cassidy and Scott Baio on my wall. TACK! I had hundreds of pin holes. I was so proud and he was so angry.

   Course I was a TEENAGER and should have known better. Glad he did it now – and not later.

   Great job you!
   hugs,
   em

7. Nancy Panko July 20th, 2009 at 8:31 pm 7

   Lauren,
   LOL! I am laughing because I totally understand how you feel, I too am a little OCD and decorate my kids rooms all cute and sweet, and they love it but they also like adding their own touch, and before I used to freak out because I wanted it all nice and neat like the pictures in magazines but then I realized that it is their room and if it makes them happy to add their touch so let them! The only rule I have is that before bed their rooms need to be picked up. As long as they are not destroying things or writting on walls they can personalized their rooms. Think about it as a kid the only part of the house that is really yours is your room, let them have fun, one day they will grow and there will be no more cute “scribbles” decorating their walls…enjoy it while you have it ;D

8. Michele Swanberg July 20th, 2009 at 9:50 pm 8

   Lauren that is so funny! What a creative boy you have there! My son put vasoline on everything in the house. It took hours to clean. When I asked him if there was anything else that I had missed, he started to cry and said “I vasolined the dog!” That poor dog! I found her under the couch shaking like a leaf. She looked like a greased rat! It took 4 or 5 baths to get it all out. He also sprayed a whole can of shaving cream in his room and tied all the kitchen furniture together with twine. I couldn’t keep baking soda and vinegar in the house because he would sneak into the kitchen and make volcanoes. Oh, I forgot about the time he was babysitting his little brothers and he caught the bathroom carpet on fire. There was never a dull moment with that boy!

9. willireb July 20th, 2009 at 9:57 pm 9

   My daughter was about three and a half when she learned to write her own name. And she wrote it—on everything with everything. On the orange settee with green crayon, on the fireplace bricks also in green, on her pink walls in red sharpie pen, on her floor in black sharpie pen, scratched into the bathroom door with I-don’t-know-what, etc. etc. And the problem was, I never, ever, caught her at it. Not once. I still sometimes wonder if she got up in the middle of the night to do it!!!! By the way, did you know you can wash sharpie pen marks off the wall with alcohol? But now that she is grown, I miss those days. No one can make you crazier or happier than your kids.

10. DWD July 20th, 2009 at 10:04 pm 10

    Oh My!!! All I could think of is you trying to sell your house and the patches of paint coming off the walls with the stickers!!! LOL

    My boys are now 28 & 30, but I remember them decorating their rooms and being so proud of them. All I asked was they not write on the walls. They had cork boards on the back of their doors to display their works of art. LOL

    I don’t recall ever doing anything like this myself but my boys have done several things. The youngest was the worse of the two. My husband bought this large, beautiful teakwood ship with about 30 canvas sails. Althought I am not into that sort of thing, it was a beautiful ship. My youngest decided one day to cut all the strings off the sails. I didn’t know until I went in the living room to vacuum and saw all this string on the floor. I almost died!!! LOL

    Then the both of them, they were maybe 3 & 5, were in the garage at my parents, supposedly playing pool. We smelled unusual fumes and went to see what they were into. Well………….they decided to spray paint my brother’s new motorcycle with black spray paint!!! I thought my mother was going to croak. My brother has always been her favorite, and she always thought he worked so hard for things he bought. She was dead set on getting all the paint off the motorcycle before my brother saw it. She sat out there with gas and a towel and got every speck of paint off that motorcycle. I was trying to clean my kids!!! LOL

11. Holly July 20th, 2009 at 10:18 pm 11

    That’s adorable!!! I’m with you though.. I’m not a fan of stickers myself.. My 4 year old gets his hands on them and they are stuck everywhere.. and they don’t always come off the dinning room table or the marble floor easily!!

12. Autumn July 20th, 2009 at 10:36 pm 12

    Thanks for Sharing….my husband and I were laughing so hard! We can just hear our 4 y/o daughter saying the same things as Noah!

13. Sharon July 20th, 2009 at 10:48 pm 13

    My daughter has done the same thing with her art work, but she has used scotch tape rather than stickers. She started doing this in first grade at age 6 or 7…had several up when she first showed me….her “art gallery” (her words). DH and I discussed it, and have let her go for it. She doesn’t hang up everything (now 8, almost 9). She will make signs for her door and tell us she is having an art show & sale. She has always been very good about keeping the art on the paper and not walls/carpet etc. I wasn’t allowed to have posters and such on my walls as a kid (one at a time, with the poster putty) and decided this was one way she could do her thing.

14. Amanda P (Australia) July 20th, 2009 at 11:07 pm 14

    Lauren,
    I can totally relate to your story of you as a child. My mother is still mortified by my actions as a 3 y.o. at a Sunday School picnic. We we learning about God and how he created all the world and all the things in it, and that when we die we go to heaven to be with God.
    That afternoon while playing in the garden with other children from my Sunday School class a small butterfly landed on my hand and I calmly took it over to show our teacher. I than smashed the butterfly between both of my hands (killing it) and said to the butterfly “Go see God!” – all the adults were totally shocked and my poor mother nearly had heart failure…. I still take many things at face value.

15. Bonnie aka raduse July 21st, 2009 at 2:27 am 15

    Oh Lauren, thanks for the good laugh tonight. Noah sounds so much like my husband. In fact, my DH “carved” a star into an entertainment center, or whatever they were called back then, when he was a little kid just because it was Christmas time.

16. Alicia Weiman July 21st, 2009 at 6:01 am 16

    This is too funny! I can remember about a week before Ethan died that he was into painting and wanted to paint something at the hospital, well he got done with what he was painting and decided to just paint the hospital table….after hearing the news we had that day it didn’t really matter to us so we just let him have fun. The nurse came in and said, would he like some paper? We said no….he’s having fun with the table! He did the same thing when we got home. Now I have a table with red paint all over it because that is what he wanted to do!

    Maybe you could get some frames and he could change out his favorite pictures every so often! GOOD LUCK!

17. Michelle July 21st, 2009 at 6:19 am 17

    Lauren,

    Kudos to you for working so hard not to stifile his creativity cause I think I might have gone loopy had I found that scene.. I have the touch of OCD and two teen boys.. can you imagine.. I am always after them to pick up especially my oldest.. he’s a slob.. I have been on him for years.. Even went so far as to lock up his play room until he was ready to clean it (he was 7 of course so I use the term clean relatively 🙂
    Hang in There,
    Michelle

18. Beverly July 21st, 2009 at 7:09 am 18

    I’ve a grown daughter and have watched many other kids grow up and have taught many an art class to all manner of young ones – even daycare. I created a documentary and an art exhibit on children’s creative development along with a scholar from Sweden. My reason for doing so was to show parents how vital it is to allow children creative expression – – and especially because I know how earnest children are when they do create – only sometimes to have a parent brush it off because they are too tired at the end of a work day – and I’ve seen little hearts crushed as a result.

    The fact that you are around to appreciate his efforts is more important, so try to let that be your focus – like you say, you don’t have to look at it.

    So two things I can say from experience: #1 children will amplify any of our own habits – so if you create in a certain way and post it on your own ‘inspiration’ wall – then you can be assured that your little ones will think that’s a fabulous idea – so take it as a compliment!
    #2 be care what you wish for – my own need for things to be a certain way has ended with my daughter “needing” the same – now we butt heads all the time! LOL!

    You’re obviously a great influence for your children – maybe give him some – oh what’s it called, tacky wall putty? 🙂 I know “sticker shock” is real – very! Ha ha!

    I’d admire your creative ‘endorsement’ as a child, maybe not your method – LOL – and the lady must have too realized it was an innocent gesture! Mine was too when I cut years of hair growth off my neighbour’s daughter, about 8 inches – we thought we’d play hairdresser! We were about 5. I can still remember how we “left” shortly after that, my dad was miserable, poor him. Aaaah memories, ha ha!

19. Yvette July 21st, 2009 at 7:18 am 19

    Lauren I suffer with the same form of ocd so I understand your stuggle. As for me when I was a child my Mom had a dinner party with about 5-6 different couples and I was one of the younger kids I took everyone into the bathroom with me for some fun time. I cut myself so the older kids ran to get my mom. When she and the other Moms entered the bathroom they found a bathroom full of kids without eyebrows. I had shaved them all off. Some kids were missing only the ends, others the middle and some the whole eyebrow. I still had mine. My Mom was mortified!!!!!!

20. Martina July 21st, 2009 at 7:23 am 20

    Lauren, I can understand your excitement very good!

    Years ago my boys were playing workshop and started to beat “virtual” nails into their wardrobe and walls (newly decprated with wallpaper!) with their toy tools! The marks are still visible!

    I gave all my kids nice boxes for their art work with the condition when the box is full, to sort our the stuff which is no longer needed. It works very well and there is no mess with all the tiny paper peaces which are soooo necessary and which can’t be thrown away.

    Best wishes from Germany

21. Maureen L July 21st, 2009 at 7:47 am 21

    Oh Lauren I wish I had encouraging words for you … but that looks like my 14 yr olds room! LOL :o) She also has stuff on her door (ALL over her door) and I just discovered the duct tape mongram on her wall – she loves the wall words and I made her a saying out of bulk vinyl, but I guess she wanted her name too … sigh … keep looking on it as creative and remember that sweet face. He really is adorable!

22. Nancy July 21st, 2009 at 7:50 am 22

    so funny! When my SD was old enough to start thinking about decorating her room, she wanted every pic she saw to be hanging in her room,well i was particular and after having to spackle a number of nail holes we put an end to it. So being a creative child, my SD decided to find her own way to hang stuff She STAPLED tons of papers to her walls!
    I had the same reaction you did!!!

23. Tracey Cuccia July 21st, 2009 at 7:52 am 23

    WOW! Look at all of those pictures!!! The stickers really put it over the top though 😉 Glad you’ve come to a happy medium on the artwork — S has a few things on her wall that she’s made with her camp friends…as you know – S has stamped herself with SU!s ‘Big Deal Alphabet’ though that was a few years ago now…A decided that she wanted to color her face with red marker…THAT was fun…

    As for me…I once ‘painted’ the side of a storage cabinet in my room with Desitin…mmmm…what a lovely sticky mess…Mom LOVED me for that one 😉

24. jaime aldrdge July 21st, 2009 at 8:11 am 24

    lauren, i know what you are feeling!! my 6 year old daughter did the same thing. but when i took a sticker off, it also ripped the paint off right to the drywall!! so, i just left them all up! and even now, anytime she gets a sticker, i find it on her wall that night! we will deal with that when she wants to redo her room in a few years! right now, i don’t have time! i didn’t really do anything destructive when i was growing up, but i do remember typing swear words on our typewriter in the rec room and accidently leaving them in the typewriter!! i was probably 10 or 11. i was so afraid when my mom found them and asked me why i did that! so i lied and said that my friend tiffany(who lived down the street) did it! then about an hour later, tiffany called to see if i could play, and my mom said to her,”next time you decide to type up bad words, learn how to spell them correctly!!” (i spelled bass-terd, and a**whole!!) when i got on the phone, tiff asked me what my mom was talking about and i just said,”i don’t know!!” i can’t believe i lied like that! i will never forget that!

25. sharon July 21st, 2009 at 8:22 am 25

    When my daughter was 3 she took a ball point pen and drew a huge smiley face on my brand new cream colored leather couch. She then put a blanket over it. I found it when I was cleaning up the room while she was napping.I was so shocked,luckily I received a cleaning kit with the couch.I ended up using the whole bottle to clean up the pen.I then put the blanket back where it had been.Well after she got up from her nap,I pretended that I was cleaning up the room and I removed the blanket in front of her.The look on her face was priceless,she kept looking at the couch and at me .

26. Lacey Stephens July 21st, 2009 at 8:55 am 26

    I don’t have anything “horrible” that I can really think of that my kids did. But my son ALWAYS keeps me on my toes. I guess the main “why on earth would you do that” moment was when he (at 4 years old) decided he wanted to cut his own apple with a steak knife!! Needless to say, that was his second set of stitches and trip to the ER!!

    Oh, I just remembered something my daughter did. She’s now 6 years old, but when she just just a toddler (around 18 months or so), while I was on the computer with my back turned to her, she colored ALL over the bedroom walls, the closet doors, bedroom door, and around the corner to the hallway with a purple crayon!! Amazing how quiet she was when she did it!! At least stickers can come of fairly easy…crayon on the other hand…thankgoodness for the Magic Eraser!!

    Regarding his “creative decorating” for his room. Why don’t you buy/create him some sort of bulletin board where he can keep 6 of his pictures and rotate them out with new ones when he wants. That way it stays neat and confined within the board, yet he gets to display his “art work”!

27. pattyjo July 21st, 2009 at 9:09 am 27

    He is sooooo cute and I would love to have my sons that age again. He’s a cutie!
    Pattyjo :+)

28. Trena July 21st, 2009 at 9:18 am 28

    What a priceless story Lauren; thanks for sharing it. We have so many stories related to things our oldest has done. She is 14 now, but one time when she was about 6 or 7, she decided to make a huge smiley face on our bathroom mirror with my husband’s shaving cream. Each eye was a full handprint, as was the nose, and then the mouth was made from several handprints. She never said a word to us, she just silently created her masterpiece and left it there for one of us to find. I’m the one who discovered it and while we weren’t exactly happy with her, we knew that it would wash off easily. It was hard for my husband and I not to laugh. I grabbed the camera and took pictures of course, which we still have. Kids; they’re curious little people. Sad part is, they grow up too fast.

29. Vicki July 21st, 2009 at 10:05 am 29

    I totally get the OCD thing — I’ve gotten much better over the years but when my kids were little, I was cleaning and straightening all the time. My wake-up call was when my daughter was about three, she hated having other kids over to our house. I finally figured out it was because I freaked out when everything was a mess when the kids left. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t suffering in silence LOL!
    I tried to lighten up – they wouldnt’ agree but I really have gotten better. They are now 20 and 14 – and the 20 year old’s room almost killed me LOL

30. Katie July 21st, 2009 at 10:11 am 30

    How cute, it’s a good thing you took pictures and included the proud artist. He looks so pleased with his wonderful idea.

    Maybe you need to give him a place to display his artwork, not just save it. I’m lucky and have a steel front door and we use magnets to display my son’s art work. We also have a large bulletin board in his room but you could put up a strip of metal that circles the room where he could display stuff with magnets or sticker-tape. Encourage the display but put some parameters on it that YOU can live with.

31. Debbie McKelvey July 21st, 2009 at 10:27 am 31

    I understand how that can be upsetting, but like most people said you handled it well. I can see he’s going to be creative like mom! LOL!

    I remember when my son colored our kitchen cabinets with a black sharpie!! Luckily they make this wonderful products “Goo Gone” has a citrus smell and it removes stickers, sharpie coloring, gum etc…and it has saved alot of things my son was creative with.

    Hang in there, the kids will be grown and gone before you can blink. My son is now 30 and has 4 kids of his own.

32. Becki aka queenoe on SCS July 21st, 2009 at 10:53 am 32

    What great pictures and great stories everyone. I laughed so hard at this. Never having had children of my own, but having 24 nieces and nephews I totally know how kids are and quickly came to the conclusion with my sisters 3 that SHARPIES or any permanent markers were not allowed ANYWHERE near the kids. We lived in a rental for a while and the kids made a mural out of the hallway walls. We thought we were so smart because the markers were not permanent ink. Image our dismay when the PAINT came off the walls as well as the markers!!!

33. Susan Hall July 21st, 2009 at 11:17 am 33

    You should see Damians room, dresser and tv stand covered with everything hes has ever drawn or made. His dresser is covered in stickers from kindergarden and those
    are extra stickers he learned to count them. The worse thing that I did as a child from my earliestmemories when I was two we lived on Savoy Street in Dallas, Texas and we had just eaten supper and mother left all the food on the table and I climb up on the table and threw all the food all over her wall paper walls, boy did I get a good spanking. That happen in 1958. We laugh about it today but I am sure she was not very happy with me at the time. susan

34. Holly July 21st, 2009 at 11:29 am 34

    Lauren, my question for you is since this was done in May and you’re just now sharing it – is his room still like this?

    LOL!

35. Tammy Tansey July 21st, 2009 at 11:30 am 35

    Hi LAuren,
    I felt the need to share the very silly things that my special needs daughter has done. Well she does have a sensory deficit and with that being said loved to rub shaving cream all over her, the walls, the sink everywhere!! and after cleaning up those disasters she moved onto lotion, toothpaste,baby powder, anything she could get her hands on. This is when she was 3,4,5,6,7,8, years old I was hopeful she would out grow this however she is going to be 14 in the fall and she very tiny (only about 4’3″ and 75 lbs) She hasn’t had one of these episodes in a very long time, then the other night we had waffles for dinner and I left to go do something and came back and the counter and herself was comletely covered with maple syrup OMG!!! what a mess that was to clean up!!! hopefully she won’t still be doing this at 21. lol
    Tammy

36. Traci M July 21st, 2009 at 1:11 pm 36

    My daughter will be 5 next month. Last year and then again this past May she decided to cut her bangs right to her head. A year ago she pretty much cut them all off, this year it was the day AFTER her dance recital (TG) she only cut the center section of bangs about 2 inches wide. They’ve grown out now to about 1 1/2″, but about half as long as the others.

    Thanks for sharing your story. It really wasn’t that bad. It’s an easy fix, unlike the scratched picture you did as a kid.

37. Cathy July 21st, 2009 at 1:39 pm 37

    Oh my, I have just spent 20 minutes laughing my head off at all of your kids’ antics. ;D

    My now 22 year old was a holy terror when he was nursery school age. At age 4 he cut open his brand new twin mattress so he could tell for sure that it was the same quality as the mattress he saw advertised on TV. (The Sealy commercial showed a cutaway picture of a mattress and the wonderful coils.)

    Even though I hid every pair of scissors in the house, a few weeks after that, he hunted until he found some embroidery scissors and cut a “window” in my brand-new-only-hanging-in-the-windows-for-two days sheers that I’d bought for our dining room. He wanted to be able to see outside so he could watch the bigger kids playing.

    Fifteen years from now, you’ll be laughing at this and telling about it family parties….. these stories always are much better after a lot of time has passed LOL.

38. Ginny Crawford July 21st, 2009 at 1:51 pm 38

    When I must of been about eight years old, I took a razor blade and cut down the back of my mother’s red leather chair! It was directly in the center of the back of the chair about four inches long. My mother was absolutely furious! I’m surprised I’m still alive to tell the story. I’m exactly like you, Lauren, I don’t know what possessed me to do such a thing. My mother was a divorced, single mom who worked as a telephone operator. We hardly had any money and she LOVED her furniture. After reading your post about damaging that car and not knowing why you did it, I had to share my craziness. Now I do papercrafting and I’m a lot better!

39. Susan July 21st, 2009 at 2:00 pm 39

    I am sitting here smiling….Both of my children are grown now (25 and 23) and their room was the one place in the house that was totally theirs and I would pretty much leave it alone. Eventually the mess bothered them and they’d clean up. A person needs a place of their own. I think what Noah did is actually quite great since he’s very proud (correctly so!!!) of his lovely artwork. Would it be possible for you to get him a large bulletin board? Or to possibly border off a large section of wall with bulletin border from a school supply store? I learned long ago that if their messy rooms are the biggest worry that I have I am blessed. And thank God I am blessed with my kiddos…they never got into any trouble.

40. suezie July 21st, 2009 at 3:31 pm 40

    Much as we hate the mess kids will be kids huh? When my daughter lived at home she would tell me ‘to just shut the door and don’t look’.

    Have you ever considered an interchangable form of display for the kids, say A4 frames on the wall so he can display a few special pictures and change them. Maybe a large plastic pocket display hanging on the back of the bedroom door that he can slip artwork in and out of to display.
    A few cleverly connected album pocket pages would do the trick and then you could easily tuck it away if need be.
    You’re such a creative lady I’m sure you could come up with a creative (and stress-free) display idea that would solve this dilema. All the best.

41. Kathi Lang July 21st, 2009 at 5:40 pm 41

    Lauren….I know it bugs the helc out of you BUT…Go with it! Seriously. He’ll be all grown up before you know it and then you’ll wish he was home and little and in his room again. Honelstly, the years pass so dang fast. This truly is nothing in the fast pace of life. Think of the joy it gave to him rather than the upset it has caused you. I comend you for not loosing it. You really are a good momma. He will remember how great it was and if you leave it alone for awhile, he will grow up a more secure, confident man for the love you show him. You did good. Scrapebook the pictures, have a laugh and remember this story to tell HIS children. Love and blessings, Kathi

42. Angie Lutz July 21st, 2009 at 8:07 pm 42

    Hmmm…I have yet to experience something “artistic” like this with my 5 year old son. He did try to be “helpful” and feed our 3 goldfish some of mommys Diet Dr Pepper one time because they were thristy. Only one fish survived 🙁

    Your story about the car reminds me of my own story. I am the oldest of 3 kids and the only girl. When I was 5 and my younger brothers were 4 and 6 months, I wandered into the garage and found some FLORESCENT ORANGE spray paint and proceeded to paint anything and everything I could find from my 4 year old brother to the house, car, fence, mailbox, etc. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I couldn’t stop! I was in huge trouble and I knew it. My mom had to chase me down to get me to stop. It’s something we laugh about now!

    As I got older, I learned to do things that “boys” did, to get my younger brothers in trouble. It’s something that I outgrew and a big joke with my brothers now.

    Anyways, thanks for sharing. I needed a good laugh today!

    Hugs, Angie 🙂

43. Debra July 21st, 2009 at 10:08 pm 43

    Well, thanks for sharing your story about Noah. I loved it, but I am pretty much the opposite from you as far as my kid’s rooms go. I close their doors and don’t want to see what is (or isn’t) in there.

    My daughter’s room is downstairs .. last week I had to go down there for something. Opened the door, and she had a HUGE bag of garbage in the middle of the floor – all sitting in the biggest GLAD garbage bag I’ve ever seen – plus she had written all over her room in black sharpie marker. I just wanted to cry… some walls had pictures of models and actresses and her favorite bands taped onto them, but it was the black sharpie that got me. She even wrote in black sharpie on her closet door. I’ll never get it off .. don’t know yet how much Mr Clean eraser will erase! Maybe some of that ‘KILZ’ primer ….

44. “Nothing is harder… - My Time, My Creations, My Stampendence July 22nd, 2009 at 8:02 am 44

    […] On a lighter note I have to say I got so much enjoyment from the kid stories you all shared on THIS POST!! […]

45. lacyquilter July 22nd, 2009 at 10:59 pm 45

    Too cute, Lauren. I let my kids decorate their rooms however they want. To me, that is their space. And trust me, the stuff he put on the walls this year will not stay there forever. He’ll grow out of that stage and want something else. In a few years he’ll be embarrassed (by his friends most likely) and it will all come off.

    I also do NOT clean my kids rooms. It’s up to them if they want it clean or a disaster area. They’ve both gone through both stages of that. I figure it teaches them that they are responsible for what belongs to them.

46. melanie July 23rd, 2009 at 9:16 pm 46

    Well, it turns out my 19 month old daughter also has a creative side! Unfortunatley she expresses it differently. She likes to reach her hand into her diaper and pull out her “poop” after she goes and paint herself, her crib and anything in reach! Hopefully this passes quickly! We try to check her frequently and get to her fast if we suspect she is going potty in her diaper! Good thing the othe kids are all potty trained!
    🙂

47. Maureen (Moe) July 29th, 2009 at 6:26 pm 47

    THANK YOU FOR SHARING both those stories!!!

    The night before my daughter’s “graduation” from Preschool… Emme decided to turn herself into a tiger (thanks to a Comcast Cable commercial on TV – not sure if it’s regional, but if you’ve seen it, it may come to mind)
    Ball Point head to toe…stripes, claws, etc.
    Of course I had just bather her and put her to bed (she was going to have a big day the next day and I was finishing the teachers gifts…

    I can’t tell you how much it means for other mom’s to share stories – makes me feel “normal” and “human”
    THANKS!