Daily Dose of Kids – Paint
My father and I have something in common, we both hate to paint. We both agree that the best part of living in military housing is the fact that we can tell our spouses or children – sorry, you can’t paint the walls because the military won’t let you. I spent 20 years not having to paint bedrooms by simply using that nice little excuse. Once, I violated those rules and allowed Jenn to put wallpaper border on her walls and then lived to regret it when the time came to strip those walls and get everything back up to "standards".
Jenn lives in military housing with her husband, and has since she got married. She ignored those rules and stenciled and painted and wallpapered up her military housing in NJ. And then had to repaint everything military off white before she moved to Charleston. You’d think she would have learned her lesson but no, she hasn’t. She’s painted and stenciled and wallpapered up her new house. We always use to tease her about being adopted – this is one of those reasons. Neither the dirtbag or I would ever do that much work on a house that had to be repainted military off white in a few years.
So why am I doing it now, in a rental unit?? Letting these kids choose these incredibly dark colors? Michelle had a mural on her wall for a couple of years that was every primary color plus black. Her bedroom door is still a combo of black and red. Now she’s got that deep teal green color, E has a light but incredibly bright blue and RJ has hit somewhere in the middle with a cross between the lighter blue and the deep teal. And I’m exhausted.
E, RJ and I began painting around 10:30am. After RJ and I spent an hour taping baseboards and frames. Within 3 minutes of our project, E had decided sitting on the paint can lid was a good idea. Then she stepped on it. They both kicked the drop cloth so there was no drop cloth anywhere near the walls. They rolled over the tape and onto the baseboard and frame. No big deal. Didn’t bother me at all. But when RJ wiped up an "over-roll" as we call it with a rag we had used to wipe down filthy walls, I got a little tense. When I looked down and saw she had dropped the filthy rag into the paint tray full of paint, I decided we all needed a break. I took five. The girls took the rest of the day. And the half child wandered in just when I thought I might disinigrate into dust (there goes the plastination was what I was thinking).
The boy took over the top half of the room while I worked the bottom. Within half an hour it was DONE. (Except clean up, I am always in charge of cleanup).
Now we’ve got to deal with some spray painting of bookshelves this week, tracking down a dresser that will fit in her closet because she isn’t willing to get rid of any of her three bookshelves (or maybe an under the bed storage thing would work??) and get that painted her weird perriwinkle color. Oh and she needs a desk chair. I’m thinking she needs to paint one herself – an unfinished wooden chair that she can paint a seascape on or something would be fun for her.
Now Prince J needs to choose his color and I need a couple of months to recuperate.
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