Will the Guilty Party Please Stand Up?

So, I walked into the bathroom to find blue crayon colored everywhere. The floor, the toilet seat, the step stool, the potty chair in the corner. My first reaction was, "Annie!! What happened in here?!" When it suddenly hit me . . . I now have two possible suspects. Ellie, at 15 months old, is now quite capable of this kind of destruction, and really even more likely to cause it. So, suddenly the blame shifts and I bring little Ellie in and show her the floor and explain we don't color the floor, and have her sit down with a wet washcloth and 'help' me clean up the mess. Annie thinks this sounds like a ton of fun, so she comes in and helps too. I sat there, scrubbing, all the while thinking back to Annie at this age, coloring on the wall for the first time (09/11/07), right around this same age. I realized we are entering a whole new phase of Ellie's development and I marveled at how quickly they grow up. And, as we were nearly finished, I suddenly realized that (being a dork and all) I was missing the opportunity to document this 'milestone' of Ellie's, and I ran to get the camera (cursing the fact I'd already wiped clean the crayon 'masterpiece'.) As I took a few pictures, I told Annie all about how when she was this age she colored on the wall and had to clean it up. To which she kind of responded along the lines of, "Like how now that I'm three, when I colored on the floor I get to clean up now?" What huh? The truth unravels and I uncover that Annie was in fact the one who colored all over the floor, toilet, et cetera. My reaction went from mild annoyance for the mess mixed with awe at my growing children, to being pretty darn pissed, and angry at Annie for her very uncharacteristic destructive behavior, as well as her letting me blame Ellie for the mess. I mean, seriously, she's three years old! Coloring on the floor!? That's ridiculous. So, she got a time out. And I tried apologizing to Ellie for blaming her, but a.) she didn't really understand the situation anyway, and b.) she'd had a blast cleaning the floor with her Mom and sister, so she'd never ever realized she was in trouble.

So much for Ellie's first 'cleaning up after drawing all over stuff' photo shoot.
This didn't turn out to be the milestone I thought it was for Ellie; not her first crayons on unacceptable surfaces milestone. But I think it was the first time I can remember where Annie purposefully let her little sister take the blame for something that she herself did . . . so, that's kind of a milestone of its own.

Here's the first time Annie colored (and then cleaned) the walls, in September 2007, at 16 months old.

And then, while I was typing this, Annie just smeared two whole handfuls of lotion in Ellie's hair.
Anyone want a cute, blonde three year old for the day?

On the flip side, Ellie's been continuously just melting my heart today (except, possibly, when I thought she'd colored all over the bathroom). When cuddling with me this morning, she was clutching her stuffed dinosaur tightly, and just grinning happily. Then, she suddenly decided I needed to kiss her dinosaur, and she proceeded to have me kiss her stuffed animal about 47 times . . . growing happier and happier each time. After five or six times of me kissing the doll, she'd just giggle and clutch it to herself and hug it tightly. Then about 10 seconds later she'd decided it needed more Mommy kisses, and we'd start the whole thing over again. It was adorable to watch her so happy about all this affection. She can be so sweet and cuddly. And, as gross as it is, I love when she dives for me with her drooly mouth wide open, wanting kisses. My other favorite thing she does a lot now, and has been doing all morning, is when she sees me, smiles, then takes off running to Annie's room, only to return 30 seconds later with a book (or as many books as she can carry), and then she runs to me, turns around, and backs into my lap (walking backwards until she literally hits my leg and just topples into my lap), then she turns and grins at me, and lifts up the book and turns to the first page. I had been worried she wouldn't share the same love of books as Annie had at this age, because truthfully we haven't read as much with her as we did with our first . . . but she adores books, and wants me to read to her several times a day.