A Glimpse into Fatherhood...

This picture has a story to it. It also fortells my future in some respects. In the name of the father, and the son.....lord help me now.

My niece, Valaree, who is 6, spent the night over the weekend. While we were waiting for dinner to cook, my husband and I sat at the kitchen table with her coloring pictures. I periodically got up to check on dinner. During one of these trips to the oven, my husband decided to color the white blaze on Mossy's snout with blue marker! (Don't ask; he did this as a kid with his Dalmations too.....and please note, no animal was harmed or permanently inked! In fact, I think Mossy liked his war paint!) Anyways, I proceeded to ask "Allen, why would you do that?" and cleaned off Mossy's snout. Meanwhile, my niece stared in awe and I could see the wheels in her head moving.....'Wow, it is OK to do something like that!?'

Our evening progressed and we finished dinner. Allen went out to the barn to check on the horses and I was finishing up cleaning in the kitchen. Val was decorating Rubbermaid containers I had sitting out with her markers ;) The next thing I know, she comes into the kitchen and declares something - what, I cannot tell you. I cannot for the life of me remember how she presented herself because I was in shock that she TOOK SHARPIE MARKERS (she found on my bookshelf) and drew a smiley face over her face. Complete with a big green grin from cheek to cheek, crossing under her chin...and 900 red eyeballs above her eyebrows and on her forehead!

Ok, so not a big deal, kids do things like this all the time, right? But did she HAVE to use Sharpie markers!!! I told her it wasn't going to come off because they are permanent and then she became upset because she said she didn't want kids at school to 'laugh at her'. I thought to myself, why would she think to draw on her face with a sharpie? Oh WAIT....didn't my husband just show her this kind of thing was ok by drawing on the dogs face! I think he did!!

So, when he came back in the house, I presented to him his wonderful lesson in parenting 101 and told him to figure out how to get it off her! It came off thank goodness, but not without a fight! When she stays the night on the farm, her mom is guaranteed to pick up a stinky, messy, horse-smelling child, but I am not sure she would want to see a clown face, painted on with Sharpie, on her child as well :)

I also might add that in the midst of trying to clean this off her, she was upset, my husband started to feel bad, and so his way of fixing it was telling her it was ok to draw on him! Oy!