If you were to walk into our house right now you'd be hit by the powerful smell of paint thinner.
James, our ever curious and busy, busy, busy, toddler had been playing with Ben and two of his friends. Kurt had asked the boys to watch and play with James.
(The girls and I were at SIL for a craft morning.)
As it goes, I'm told the boys got busy playing legos and forgot about James for a while.
....they found him downstairs dipping tools in a gallon of paint I had used yesterday to paint a shelf. (How James knew the paint was down there is a mystery. He wasn't with me yesterday when I was working on that!)
I thought I'd closed it up well. Guess not!
James was 40% covered on his body in white, oil-based paint; the basement floor had paint on a fair portion of it, little white footsteps led outside, some of our screwdrivers and a hammer were white.....
I received a text from Kurt "Call Me". So I called him, found out what had happened and decided I should come home to help the guys.
When I arrived, James was pretty well cleaned up. Kurt had purchased three bottles of paint thinner to clean up James, the floor and the tools. I finished washing James by giving him two showers with lots of shampoo and soap to get the remainder of paint off around his eyes, and get the smell of paint thinner off him. He cried through most of that and promptly fell asleep after I got him dressed.
Ben, Michael and Jadon learned a good lesson for when they become fathers in the future....never leave a busy toddler alone....toddlers by their very nature are active, inquisitive and some are down right quite industrious to figure out how to open paint cans, etc....
They did a great job cleaning up all the mess James made and I really appreciate all their hard work!
Michael, Ben, and Kurt cleaning paint off the basement floor
Ben, Michael, Jadon, and Kurt cleaning paint off the basement floor
Michael and Jadon hard at work
Our tools before they were cleaned
Proverbs 27:23 was rolling around my head as I watched the boys cleaning. James is not a flock but he is one very busy, busy toddler.
"Know well the condition of your flocks,
and give attention to your herds,"
Now you know why I'm praying for us to be able to put James in a toddler preschool program 2 hours a day!!!! He needs energy outlets!!!