I have four children, and over the years they have tried very hard to find creative ways to kill each other and also give me near heart attacks. Each time I say, “Huh, that’s a new one!” or “Some day y’all are going to grow out of this.” Thankfully, they are slowly outgrowing this adorable trend – and I haven’t had a heart attack, yet.
I have survived raising them to tell some truly hilarious tales. One of my most favorite is the one where Violet – the innocent 2-year-old, painted her 5-year-old brother James’s eyes shut with nail polish.
In our house it is known as “The Winter of the Boneless Child.”
And for reasons that are still unknown, Maisy and Wyatt, the oldest two of the brood (who were OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER), swear up and down that they had nothing to do with what happened. I find this to be highly suspicious because I don't wear nail polish and Maisy was the only one who had it at the time. Also, Wyatt was in the middle of the great bunk bed war of 2011, desperately trying to win control over the top bunk. If you ask me, they were (and still are) framing their little sister.
If you run into those two on the street, go ahead and question them down. This could be the next Netflix hit. It could put Creston on the map. Anyway…
It was around 8:30 p.m. I couldn’t get Violet to bed. I had given up. She’s the fourth kid – the others had broken me. I was sitting in the dining room typing away on my Master’s thesis when James Henry, my sweet sweet darling boy, burst into the room – sobbing … and blind.
“MOM!”
I didn’t turn around. I’m the mother of four. Those kids cry a lot.
“What.”
“Mom! I’m blind!”
“That’s cute.”
“MOM! I’m blind!”
I turned around because I heard whispering from the other room, when a small two year old came in…carrying nail polish.
I went on high alert. Two year olds with nail polish are NEVER good.
“What is going on?” I yelled.
He said, “Violet painted my eyes shut with nail polish!”
“WHAT?”
“I can’t open my eyes!” yelled James in a panic.
And then suddenly he couldn’t walk either.
He went boneless. He just lost all bones and fell down in the dining room.
I tried to pick him up, but in a weird boneless way he was also kind of planking. I tried to pry his eyes open to look into them, but I couldn’t even do that. This was a solid paint job.
I looked down at Violet and she just looked up at me and waved the nail polish bottle in the air.
Maisy and Wyatt were nowhere to be found.
I think this seems pretty guilty.
I knew we would have to go to the ER (not our first trip there) and I hurriedly picked James up and tried to get him to the car.
Picture this, if you will, me trying to carry a scrawny planking yet boneless, blinded, sobbing five year old child through a door.
Took about 10 minutes, and most of my delightful vocabulary.
Meanwhile, Violet stood at my feet waving the nail polish at me.
In the car, he regained movement. He wasn’t paralyzed anymore and the bones grew again.
However, the moment we got to the ER? Boneless.
Thank God the ER door was wide and automatic.
In we go with a paralyzed, blinded, hysterical child, and me…kind of laughing, and Violet with the nail polish.
The nurses scrubbed his eyes really good and were able to open them – and I think that hurt badly. He had some nasty abrasions on his eyes for a while. Poor fella.
The nurses confiscated Violet’s nail polish, and I told them I thought she had been framed.
Where were Maisy and Wyatt, you may ask? They were home with our neighbor – cooking up their alibis. Stories they still stand by to this day. But I think that Netflix will break them. I wonder what the working title of the special will be? “The Winter of the Boneless Child” seems kinda dark.