a menace at work

Thinking we'd be moving back home today, I cleaned and washed sheets and packed in preparation for leaving the lake house. While I was standing up on the bed rehanging the curtain that Dennis yanked down, I heard him say "I paint you, Mommy" and looked down to see him holding my bottle of red nail polish, bottle in one hand and loaded brush in the other. I asked him where he'd painted me and he said "on your weg (leg), right there" and I looked to see two red dots on my favorite flannel pajama pants, blue Life Is Good pants with pink cups of hot chocolate and marshmallows all over them. I KNEW when I took that bottle of nail polish out of my purse that it would end badly, and that was next on my list to put away. Not soon enough. While I was packing up bathroom toiletries, he found his crayons and drew a picture on the television screen (which cleaned pretty easily). He told me he was bored and wanted me to play with him, and I was trying to get us out quickly so we could go hike, so I turned on one of his shows for him. I put sheets on one bed and then popped back to check on him and he happily told me "I eating a crayon, Mommy" and indeed he was, had consumed about 1/4 of the brown crayon. I made him put his crayons away and despaired of ever getting away from the house. Gran came over and played with him and read to him and ate lunch with us, and we decided to walk at Wilderness Park in Prattville, a park full of old growth, very tall bamboo trees. So I abandoned my cleaning, knowing I would come back by post-walk to finish everything when I picked up my car.

Dennis did not nap on the way to Prattville. He sang several throaty renditions of "Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate's life to me" (yes, he says 'to me' and not 'for me') in full pirate voice. When we got to the park, he grabbed a stick and would periodically bend over and draw on the ground and ask something that I completely did not understand until Gran translated it as "which path should we take?" and then he'd say "this way, follow me". He told us he was a park ranger and he led the tour. He pointed out bamboo trees to us. His initial reaction to the bamboo trees? "Mommy, look at all the fireman pole trees!". After 20 minutes of park rangering, he took a break and played pirate, asking us where the treasure was (in a deep growly voice). It was a fun walk.

The shopping did not go as well. He whined his way through Target and we finally realized he was very hungry. He had some milk while we were in the store and 1/3 bag of the Cheetos he begged for afterward in the van. Gran ran into the grocery store while I sat in the car with him and she sat in the car with him while I ran into Ross for a sanity break. I came back out in time to change a very nasty diaper. He still insisted he was hungry so we went to a drive thru and only ordered for him. He nearly fell asleep while eating--he conked out very soon afterward. We came on back pretty early as the prospect of more shopping with him along was just too much to deal with. It isn't that he's bad or begs for things so much as the fact that he's loud and incessant, and after hours of that, we were just craving a little peace since it had been such an awful day otherwise for both Gran and myself. I won't elaborate, but we are not able to move back home yet and it will probably be several more days. David had a REALLY bad day, some well intentioned help turned into a costly disaster, and he's re-injured his bad knee. I'm glad today is over. Parts of it were great fun, much of it was flat depressing.