My mother has been after me to share the story of what she refers to as the “Purple Paint Incident” ever since it happened a few weeks ago.

My extremely pregnant sister and her two girls were over to pick something up and I was rushing around to get ready to leave for work. MJ and my sister’s youngest were playing in the foyer where I had foolishly left my work stuff where they could reach it.

Normally, this would not have been too terrible as the most they could have gotten into was work bag, but on this particular day, I had an almost full gallon of purple paint with my things as I was planning on doing a project with the kids at work.

I was in my bedroom, my sister was in the living room, so there were no adults around to thwart them. There was a big boom and I ran out to see the hardwood floor, in the house I have owned for less than a year, covered in purple paint. I (quite rightly) begin making incoherent noises. To this day, I am still not quite sure who was the culprit. MJ had purple splashes down his belly, but my sister’s daughter had purple hands and feet.

They both began crying, afraid of being yelled at, and my sister’s four year old begin chanting: “I didn’t do it, Aunt Amber. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do it.”

My sister grabbed some paper towels and began wiping up the mess while I took care of the open can of paint. The four year old was still chanting when I came in the house so I had to reassure her that I knew she was not responsible for the mess.

My sister told me that she had done the best she could and went to corral the children into MJ’s playroom. I panicked. The floor was still purple and I was not OK with that. I got some warm water and we both went back to work on the spot.

From her vantage in the playroom, the four year old felt it was her duty to point out any spots she thought we were missing. My sister had to quit before the spot was completely up as the baby was making her uncomfortable and then she went to entertain the still crying children.

Somehow, the two year old ended up with some sort of whistle and would not stop blowing it. As she was part of the reason the floor was purple and her sister was not helping, still shouting out instructions, I became even more frustrated than I was. I told the two year old that if she would not stop blowing the whistle, I would shove it up her nose. In hindsight, this may have been a harsh threat to make to a two year old, but remember, my hardwood floor was PURPLE!

Needless to say, I no longer like the color purple. I was able to get all but one small spot off the floor, so there is now a piece of furniture there to cover it up 🙂