It was a Thursday night and everyone was doing his or her own thing. Kid 4 was watching Star Wars Clone Wars in his room, getting ready for sleep. I was in the downstairs office catching up on my DVR'd TV shows. Daddy was in bed, watching football, of course.
I heard the quick thumping of little feet upstairs, then the master bedroom door open and Daddy yelling, "What do you have? What do you have?" He had seen Kid 5 walk into our bathroom, then walk out holding what looked like a bundled up t-shirt tucked underneath her arm that was furthest away from him, apparently hoping he would not notice she was sneaking something out. When he asked her what she had in her hand, she bolted down the hall to her room. I ran upstairs to find out what the shouting was about.
We simultaneously made it to her doorway as she began to cry. As I stood there with my mouth hanging open, Daddy yanked a bottle of nail polish remover off of the floor where Kid 5 had dropped it wrapped in the t-shirt. We both saw the dark purple nail polish on the stairs of her bunk bed, smeared on the rail, and on her feet. As Kid 5 cried, I tried to decide on where to start cleaning up, and decided the feet come first.
Daddy hauled her back to our bathroom where I scolded her while wiping her feet with nail polish remover. After getting all of the nail polish off that I could, I washed her feet, still scolding her and sent her back to her room where Daddy tried to clean what he could on the bed.
I thought all was resolved until a while later when I went to the kitchen for a snack. I heard Kid 5 crying hysterically, and wondered what calamity had befallen her this time. I called to her, and was met with silence. As I listened and called to her again, I heard her whimper, but in closer proximity than from upstairs. As I walked around the downstairs, trying to pinpoint her muffled sniffles, I realized she was underneath the dining room table and using the chairs to stay out of sight.
I called her gently, trying to coax her out, because I was not inclined to climb under the table to fetch her. When she realized I knew where she was, she began to wail as if she lost a limb. As I continued to coax her out, she moved around out of my reach. I finally got a hold of one of her newly clean feet, and pulled her out. She stood there with her hands behind her back and hysterical tears pouring down her face.
"Let me see your hands," I told her and I tried to pull her hands from behind her back. The volume of her wails went up as she resisted. I pulled her hands from behind her back to discover that both hands were covered in the dark purple nail polish. When I had been cleaning her feet, in my frustration and focus on scolding her, I did not notice she had hidden her hands from me by keeping them behind her back. With a huge sigh and a feeling of resignation, I led Kid 5 back upstairs to the nail polish remover.
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