Not getting Mother of the Year for this one, either

Ella wanted to have her friend, Grace, over for a long time so last week I finally said she could come over last week. I picked them both up after school and we all walked home. There were your general antics (think not letting Luke into the room to play with them, stealing Halloween candy and using it for their tea party, plus periodic squeals of girly delight intermixed with a bunch of playing around with dolls and such.

Ella came downstairs to ask me if I knew where her box of makeup was. She has a heart shaped, green box that we got at a garage sale (thankyouverymuchConnieforsellingittoher) that she stores all of her lip glosses in. I had no clue where it was (because although I will raid her stash of cash I draw the line at stealing her vanilla, starfruit, or Dr Pepper flavored Lip Smackers, ok). She asked if she could use mine instead. I felt really bad but had to say no. She thought about it and ran back upstairs to consult with Grace. Back down the stairs she came with her counter offer: nail polish. I felt guilty about telling her she couldn't use my make up so I said ok. Pay attention, folks, because here's where I went wrong...

They decided they wanted to do it by themselves. Again, feeling guilty I said ok. I put a bath towel down on the floor, plopped one child on each end and put the bag of nail polish in between them and walked out of the room. I swear I only walked out of the room for 5 minutes. 5 MINUTES MAX.

In hindsight, this was a gigantic error.

I went back into the room and was nearly knocked on my rear with the horrendous chemical smell painting your nails provides. I turned the corner and looked on the floor to find Ella quietly painting her nails while avoiding eye contact and Grace washing her hands in the sink. She said she was washing them because she got a little too much on her one nail. I looked down and feared the worst. The worst was confirmed. She not only had a smidge too much on her one nail but had managed to get paint over 75% of the hand. No biggie, right? I'll just wipe it off with my nail polish remover and call it a day. Her Mom will be none the wiser. Until, that is, I realized that part of the horrendous smell was my entire bottle of nail polish remover spilled all over the floor. Turns out the girls had tried to DIY the nail polish off Grace's hand before I got there.

So now I had no remover to get the polish off with AND it turns out that before she tried to use the remover to get it off and subsequently wash it off, she had wiped it all over her jeans. When Grace's Mom arrived a short while later, I met her at the door not only with remnant fumes of the incident but profuse apologies for polishing up her kids hand 45 minutes before her first Girl Scout meeting, not removing the hand graffiti, and ruining a pair of jeans. She said it was ok but it appeared that her eyes were burning slightly from the noxious smells emitted from my home. I'm sure the windows had to be rolled down in the car on the way home.

So, let's recap in quiz form. When you let your child come over to my house, they a.) get hopped up on a ton of Halloween candy during a tea party, b.) polish themselves, c.) ruin a pair of jeans, d.) stink like they bathed in a chemical plant or e.) all of the above and more.

You ask where the pictures are? Let's just say I didn't really want evidence and we'll leave it at that, mmmk?