Two stories about Chad’s escapades really stand out in my mind. He was about 3 as I recall. We (ex-husband and I) had moved to Jasper, Texas and it was not a good move. We had just built our dream home. This was a more recent picture of the house but we lived there almost 2 years and had put so much of our blood, sweat and tears into planning and building it. I was not ready to leave it behind just two years after building it.
Victorian
The first people who looked at the house bought it and I surely wasn’t expecting that. We moved into a rental in Texas that I had not seen (sound a bit familiar?) but it was awful. It was dirty, it was small and I didn’t like living there.
We ended up buying a house fairly soon and it was probably one of my all time favorite houses but I still wasn’t happy living in Texas and that’s the reason that I told Vince I would move anywhere in the south with him, but not Texas. See where that got me! 🙂
Anyway, I was an overprotective mom .. everyone who knows me and especially Chad will vouch for that so how he managed to pull these two stunts, I’ll never know.
First, I had a sofa that I loved and it had big flowers. I was sitting and sewing while Chad was playing in the living room floor. The Schwans man drove up, I put my sewing down and went out for just a minute. Came in and he was standing by the sofa with his hands behind his back and a very sheepish look on his face. What’s wrong, Chad? He brought his hands forward and he was holding a flower . . he had cut a huge square out of my sofa with my very sharp, tiny Gingher embroidery scissors.
Second was the nail polishing incident. The house we bought didn’t have a sewing room but it had a huge living room off the foyer so we closed that opening, made a door going into that room off the hallway, added closets and shelves and I had a sewing room. We replaced all the carpet in the house when we moved in.
I lost sight of Chad for a few minutes and began calling him. He came down the hallway (white carpet) into the sewing room (blue carpet) dripping what I thought was blood. I was in a panic thinking he was hurt, til he told me he had polished his nails. A whole bottle of red nail polish had dripped down the hallway carpet and into my sewing room on that carpet.
I’ll never forget the look on his face. He was standing there with his arms out and his feet apart . . I guess that’s what it looked like to him when I was sitting still with my fingernails and toenails drying.
We had just put the carpet in and the carpet folks were able to replace the hallway carpet. The blue carpet had red spots on it til the day we moved out.
We moved out after a fire and all the carpet was replaced but I never went back after the fire but I do know the insurance company replaced it all. I know Chad has heard this story dozens of times but I wonder if he remembers it from his own memory.
See . . my life has been kinda exciting ever since I can remember! 🙂
Karen says
When my older son was about the same age he drizzled dark red nail polish all over our off-white carpet, his gray corduroy pants, and the cabinet to my grandmother’s singer sewing machine. I got it out of the carpet with polish remover and whatever else I had on hand, but the finish on my sewing machine cabinet still bears the memories of this incident. Kids! They’re worth every second aren’t they?
Love to read your blog! Keep it coming!
Linda Steller says
LOL – he certainly gave you some good stories to tell. And look at what a wonderful, responsible young man he has grown up to be. Mighty small mischief, considering!
Eileen Eisner says
And tell the story about him coloring the walls in his room! He was adorable!!
AngieG9 says
And I thought mine were bad when they used up a box of crayons coloring all the walls in Gina’s bedroom. Since she was the ringleader, as well as the oldest, she lived with those walls until she left for college 12 years later. One of the things you have to live with when you have MS is the fact that you don’t have the energy to paint the room, or remove crayon stains, and she didn’t seem to care one way or the other as she grew up. With some of the other things they got into later in life, that barely made a blip on the screen.
Susan says
Thank you for these stories that bring back something from my own son’s childhood! I don’t know how they find those perfect moments when our attention wanders for the shortest time! I miss the Schwan’s man. They don’t come around in Knoxville any more.
Linda Steller says
I forgot to say how much I love that victorian house. I can imagine it would have been extremely hard to leave it, especially if you had to move into a much small and dirty rental. There’s an old movie with Diane Keaton and Sissy Spacek called Crimes of the Heart. That is the house I want. Such a gorgeous old Victorian.