Mess of the Week: Floor Art

On Saturday Mr. Trouble on Feet was invited to a birthday party for his good friend Olivia, who is turning four this week.  He had a wonderful time playing at her house with friends, and best of all, he even got to try out using chopsticks at lunch.  Olivia’s parents are from Singapore and Malaysia.  They invited me to come to lunch, too, which is how I know about the chopsticks.  They let Mr. TOF use a pair of Olivia’s special chopsticks that are connected with a special wheel and a little appendage that helps kids learn how to hold chopsticks  correctly.   Olivia is already a pro, and Mr. TOF had so much fun eating his noodles and eggs using the chopsticks.  He was fascinated.

Olivia loves Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. All of the guests spent a lot of time dressing up and pretending to create interesting versions of the story.  Preschool friends who use chopsticks and love the opera . . . does it get better than this?  I think not.

Mr. Trouble on Feet apparently doesn’t think so either.  He really enjoys Olivia.  He spent a lot of time telling Dr. Peds about Olivia, and over and over he mentioned, “Olivia is a princess” with a sweet, adoring tone of voice.  It was pretty adorable.   On Sunday, while he was supposed to be napping and I was in my room finishing a book that I was reading, Mr. Trouble on Feet found his brother’s  church name tag and peeled it off the church shirt it had been stuck to, resticking it to his bedroom floor.  Then he found a random blue oil pastel and proceeded to draw an “O” for Olivia intersected by an “I” for Isaiah.  Actually there were two “I”‘s, because he really loves the first letter of his name.

Once again, I am grateful for magic erasers, and especially thankful for the wise advice of the brilliant man from Riverside Flooring who came to give me an estimate on refinishing some floors shortly after we moved into our house.  After carefully examining and measuring all the spaces and making lots of calculations, he looked at me, swarmed by three wild preschoolers at the time, and shrugged, “If I were you, I think I’d just wait until all of your kids are almost ready to graduate and leave home.  Kids are tough on floors.”  Oh, such sage advice!  So often am I glad I heeded it. He wouldn’t have had to tell me that, in fact, it deterred me from spending a lot of money to have him fix my floors, and I am especially grateful for his honesty.   This family is really, really tough on floors, and as much as I would love to be living in a house with beautiful hardwood and clean carpet, it just isn’t very realistic for our  lifestyle.  So many things have happened to our floors, and because I hadn’t invested anything in them, and because I know that someday I’ll be old, moldy and lonely, with plenty of time to care for my floors, I am able to just shrug things off and clean them up as best as I can.  The floors might be ugly at this point, but I have a lot more important things to worry about, and I am OK with that.  (When I do finally refinish my floors, I am totally going to go back to Riverside Flooring just because they gave such good advice).