Mr. Clean Pays a Visit

There's been an incident.

Several years ago, when Natalie was but a wee lass and our younger Jessica was still in her infancy, Natalie thought it might be a fine idea to hone her artistic abilities by creating a masterpiece in the living room wall. Of course even back then she realized it would be wise to blame her younger sister for the graffiti so as to stay out of trouble. However she made the mistake of signing her name to the artwork and yet blaming a younger child who not only wasn't able to write the word "Natalie" but could barely even stand up by herself at the time. Thus her plot was foiled, and she was introduced to the wonders of the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser as punishment.

In our house, each child is allowed the opportunity to write on the walls and avoid death once. ONCE. Last night, it was Jessica's turn.

During the day, Jessica announced she was going up to her room "to do something", gave us a mysterious "you don't need to know" look, and disappeared. Later that afternoon we discovered what she was up to. She thought it might be a nice idea to put her own personal brand on each of the surfaces of her room by labeling each with a Sharpie. Above her headboard was written "Mi Bed". On her closet door was "Mi Clost". And on the bedroom door was "Jessica's Room" with a little heart on it. My favorite, frankly, was the drawer in which she keeps her My Little Pony collection. There's a pic of that below.

As soon as Mommy discovered this, Jessica was devastated. She knew she'd done wrong. Despite smiling and laughing and telling her the story of how her evil older sister attempted to foist blame upon her for a similar incident years back, Jessica was very traumatized for having done so wrong. Well, in some cases trauma is a good thing, cuz we know she ain't doing it again. At least, not until we get a dog and she can blame stuff on it instead.

The good news is that the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser is a wonderful product. Check out the end results of only a minute or two of scrubbing:

BEFORE:


AFTER:


BEFORE:


AFTER:


And yes, I will be the first to admit that I'm overly anal retentive about these things. But I left the stuff she wrote on the walls, since we'll be repainting the room sooner or later anyways. However I'd like to avoid having to some day sand down and restain a door. And yes, I am looking oh so forward to the flurry of comments that include "oh, how cute" and "geez, you're such a mean dad for making her clean it up."