When I was expecting Jonas I spent six horrible months completely knocked out from hyperemesis, a complication of pregnancy that, when literally translated means uncontrollable vomiting. I kept almost nothing down, took a whole host of drugs to try to quell the symptoms (which were vomiting ten times a day), and even had the joys of intravenous medication and re-hydration a few times. After that was under control (and by control I mean I was only puking twice a day and just nauseated the rest of the time), Jonas made my sciatic nerve go crazy. I had severe shooting pains whenever I tried to move. That lasted for three weeks. Then I had a very brief, very wonderful one week respite from most of the pregnancy issues. At that point I went into pre term labor and spent the next seven weeks in a hospital that was an hour and a half from my home, my friends and my husband. I was on even more drugs while I was there. Drugs that made me hallucinate. Drugs that made me shake like a leaf. Drugs that tore up my insides and raised my heart rate to higher than my baby’s. It was eight months of total misery. I’m not even going to talk about labor!

Why am I telling you this? Because my offspring, for whom I endured so much that he might be brought into this world and live in a safe, loving home, has painted the entire bathroom (walls, toilet, floor) with bright pink nail polish.

I wish I had a photo to share with you, but I was in such a state of freaking out (imagine waking up and smelling nail polish and then seeing the work of Jackson Pollock all over your bathroom- what state would you be in?) that I didn’t have the motor control to handle my camera.

An hour later, after a trip the store for several bottles of nail polish remover and copious amounts of scrubbing, the majority of the nail polish was removed, along with half the paint from the walls and color from the flooring. The toilet, however, has never looked better.
Once again I am struck by how grateful I am to not currently own my own home. It is one of my big goals, but when you are raising toddlers and they do things like this, it is such a relief to know you can call maintenance and make them deal with it, and then move on in a year or two and never have visual reminders of the amount of damage your child has caused. In the past year Jonas has managed to flood the bathroom so badly it rained in the kitchen, clog several toilets, bust a hole in the wall by flinging the door open too fast, and now this nail polish escapade.

Of course we have childproofed. We have gone through the motions of installing door locks and drawer tabs. We store things in out of the way places. So far all we have learned is that he can figure out a way around these minor inconveniences in less time than it took for them to be installed. Childproofing is a joke. Truly, where there is a will there is a way.