Frustration, thy name is Hailey.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve mentioned before that I have the world’s weirdest niece. Her name is Hailey. She’s almost three. Still in the terrible twos, but she’s been relatively cool. Weird, but cool.

Today, my sister called me and said, “You’re going to think I am so silly, but right now, I am so MAD!” and started crying.

She had just washed all the clothes for her and her new husband’s honeymoon cruise. She had also thrown Hailey’s clothes in, so that Hailey would have enough clean clothes to last a week at Grandma’s house.

Hailey saw my sister throwing things in the dryer, and decided that the perfect accesory for all those clean clothes would be a red crayon. Not just your regular skinny Crayola crayon, but one of the big mamma-jamma ones for little kids. She tossed it in the dryer while my sister was turned towards the washing machine. My sister never saw it coming.

So, Robin (AKA Little Sister) opens the dryer to find that every single piece of clothing now has big red crayon stains on it. To be honest, I thought her first move would be to throw Hailey in the dryer. But, instead she picked up the phone and called me. (As if I have children, or stain-removal experience, for that matter. Heck, if it stains, I buy a new one. Thrift stores are your friend.)

I directed her to www.howtocleananything.com, and read the instructions on how to clean crayon out. Good suggestions, but I would think WD-40 would leave a greasy stain on your clothes.

While I was directing Robin on how she might be able to get the crayon stains out, Hailey was scheming. She’s a bright little kid. (When it comes to smarts, she takes after her aunt, thank you very much!) But she apparently got a devilish gleam in her eye. Remember, this is the sweet, angelic child that talks to her boogers. (And yours .)

So, Robin’s on the phone with me, sobbing over spilled crayon, when Hailey decides to draw. On the wall. With a black Sharpie marker. Robin calmly said, “can you hold on? I have to go kill my child!” Gulp. I listened in the background. Hailey says “Mommy, I drew pictures!” Robin took the pen from her and says “Hailey, you cannot draw on the walls!” Hailey freaks out. I believe there was a pop on the hand somewhere in there.

Robin comes back to the phone, and says, “This is just great. She’s drawn a scribble on the wall (of their brand new apartment) as big as she is with a permanant marker!”

Hailey decides that her little 3 foot tall scribble isn’t enough. So, she sneaks into her Secret Stash O’ Crayolas, and adds some color.

I thought Robin was going to blow a gasket.

Grandma (our mom) is at Wal-Mart, and will be there for approximately the next 9 hours, as she needs to get a prescription filled. So, Hailey should be arriving at my office shortly, so I can watch her while Robin runs to the store and gets the messes cleaned up. Now all I need to do is hide my Sharpies, pens, pencils, markers, and anything else she can decimate my office with.

Feel free to share your frustrating child stories, so I can send Robin to this page. She could probably use a good laugh or two, also.

2

Heh. At least your sister didn’t have ME as a child. From what mom tells me, I was a hellion. Highlights:
[ul]
[li]Drew on the walls (pretty mcuh a given with any kid, right?).[/li][li]Stripped the fruit from the low branches of Gramma’s prized grape vine.[/li][li]Fed a box of elbow macaroni to my tropical fish (“But they looked hungry”).[/li][li]Poured salt in aquarium of said tropical fish, 'cause I wanted a salt-water tank.[/li][li]Loaded up the coal funace with coal in the middle of the night (“Just like Gramma does!”)[/li][li]Played hide-n-seek in the poison ivy patch in the abandoned lot next door.[/li][li]Fell into the neighbor’s fish pond at their daughter’s First Communion party (wish I could find the picture of me in my pinafore, drenched, with the lilypad in my hair)[/ul] [/li]
And this was when I was two. I was more rambunctious at three
[ul]
[li]Took apart in ten minutes the wheelbarrow that dad spent three hours putting together.[/li][li]Took apart a kiddy ferris wheel while I was on the ride [enclosed cage seats - I undid all the bolts that were on the inside of the cage – should’ve seen the look on the guy’s face when I handed them back to him].[/li][li]Did you know poison ivy can grow in lots of places, like around and up trees that little girls like to climb?[/li][/ul]

3

Try lighter fluid on the wall (according to ehow.com) & For the clothes: Use Murphy’s Oil Soap. Believe it or not, it will pull crayon out of the carpet and even clothes that have been through a dryer with a crayon! Apply it full strength to the stain and use a white wet cloth to work it out (also according to ehow.com).

Good Luck :slight_smile:

4

PS - The lighter fluid is for crayon only… on preview I saw that there was also marker on the wall. The best suggestion seems to be hairspray.

5

Let’s see…

When I was 3 my 4 YO brother and I decided to “save mom money” and cut our 2 YO sisters hair. Problem was Mom was trying to grow it out.

We used her coffe table to practice with Dad’s hammer and nails.

We used to dig up my dad’s garden once a week.

We set the house on fire numerous times.

But the one thing that almost drove my mother to a nervous breakdown was my brothers “trick” of climbing up on the refrigerator when she wasn’t looking, shouting “CATCH ME” and jumping. She probably managed to catch him more often than not but he never seemed to get badly hurt.
He thought it was hillarious but I remember it would make Mom cry it scared her so much.

6

OMG, screech-owl, we musta been separated a birth. Growing up, my parents couldn’t give me anything with visible screw heads or I would take it apart. Ruined two clocks before they figured that out.

On the other hand, I managed to survive to adulthood without acquiring a poison-ivy allergy.

Not for lack of trying, though…

7

My brother was maybe 3 when he tore the liner on the roof on my parent’s new car. Pulled it all out completely. Said he made a 'vertible like Unca Bob’s. And his 2 1/2 year old son stole the keys to my mother’s car, snuck out of the house (undoing the child-proof lock high up on the door), unlocked the car (electronic locks), turned it on, backed it into the stop sign on the corner of their yard, put it in forward and drove into the neighbor’s front porch. At two and a half!. My sisters the twins were still in their cribs when one set her bed on fire after stealing my mother’s lighter. They were supposed to be napping, so they didn’t say anything. It wasn’t until Mother smelled the smoke she found out. The twins were huddled in one crib wacthing it burn.

Good luck!

StG

8

Well, I talked to Robin last night, and she had to take the rest of the clothes to the laundromat to get everything done. She still hasn’t gotten most of the stains out, so it looks like Hailey will be wearing red splotchy clothes for a while. Too bad she’s not old enough to give a dang about what her clothes look like.

To top it all off, we had lightning storms last night, and Robin’s modem got fried. So she’s having a wonderful week. :wink:

9

Tell Robin to dress her daughter in the red splotchy clothes and take lots pictures of her, indicating what happened and how old she was.

It will be great revenge for when the prom date shows up…