Mommy Milestones Part 2: Homestyle

A little while back I wrote about some of the milestones I have gone through as a mother of two toddlers.  Yesterday, my apartment passed a milestone of its own from which it will never recover: wall, meet toddler with marker.

Now, my interior decorating style below-toddler-height can best be described as exploded-toy-box-meet-crumbled-cookies and above-toddler-height as about-to-topple-over-piles.  My walls already have years worth of while-board-marker-gray from my husband not using his eraser much at work, chocolate-covered-handprints, crayon scribbles, wall stickers (and peeled paint from when the toddler thought it would be a good idea to reposition some of those wall stickers), posters of abc's (and the Taiwanese equivalent, shapes, colors, numbers, etc.) placed at kid-eye-level, old maps with chunks missing (from our pre-kid cat days), abstract art from the landlady that took me years to figure out, and other such things.  Additionally, we have been in this apartment for almost ten years and between all of the above plus the generally damp and bubbling paint from living in a sub-tropical country with a rainy season and fairly porous walls, it's not as if my landlords aren't going to have to give this whole place a total re-haul to make it livable for the next tenants, so I'm not too worried about it.  Still this house is definitely now branded as the home of a toddler.

(As an aside, I am reminded of my first day in my job as a helper in the nursery school when I was in seminary.  Emma, one of the smallest and cutest little girls in the class, was enjoying the finger paints when out of the blue she looked at me and said, "You don't finger paint on walls" and made it clear that this was not her first experience with this artistic medium.  I'm guessing Emma's home also bore the marks of a toddler.)

Fortunately, only a few other things got branded with the red marker.  The lower bookshelves were scribbled on -- you know, the ones in toddler reach which are always empty, unlike the ones crammed to within an inch of their lives above toddler reach.  Those, however, are non-porous and the marker should come off them, being that it was a white board marker that daddy accidentally brought home.  (You can lock all the markers in a box out of toddler reach, but you can never really safeguard your home, especially with an unobservant dad like Jonathan's.)

The only book that I have discovered so far as having come in the way of the marker is this children's book in Chinese I bought years ago when I was actively studying Chinese.

Ironically, the book is called Mamma's Sick.  

It's a story all about mommy being sick and daddy and two young girls running the house.  Now, I wasn't sick when this marker matter was happening, but it did happen in the interval of time between me leaving for work and the nanny arriving on the only day of the week Stephen leaves for work after I do, and I don't think that was a coincidence.  (Vivienne's terrible shampoo incidents and 9 out of 10 dismantling of mommy's purse also happen on daddy's watch.)

Here's a page from the book where the younger sister gets
into mommy's makeup and toiletries.  On the next page,
she gives herself a haircut.  Fortunately, we haven't reached
that stage yet.

However, I am proud of my home and all the marks it bears, because it's so much better a home with this little guy in it.  (This is not to say that I am encouraging any future occurrences.)

My little interior decorator, pre-interior decorating.
(Post-interior decorating, the football on his shirt was a bit
more colorful.)