All The Pretty Colors (May 2009)

What happened was partly my fault. I guess I was naive in assuming things would not get messy. Perhaps I’m overly optimistic. I’ve been called that, as well as pessimistic, so who knows what the truth is (if there is one truth!). Maybe my level of optimism is circumstantial.

Things started innocently enough. We went upstairs, like always, and got to the serious business of having fun. This is what the Model Railroad Museum is for, after all. The upstairs play room is open only twice a week, and my little boy is always glad when it’s open. The usual toys were out, but there was also something we’d never seen before and my two-year-old bee lined for it. On the craft table were bags of sequins, in various sizes and colors. Since there is no diverting a two-year-old from something she’s already noticed, I opted to let her play with sequins, discussing with her how she must be “very careful, right?” No problem.

I put some sequins in a paper plate and let her carry them to the miniature picnic table. Seems she only wanted to look at them, maybe touch a few. She wasn’t overly interested in paint and there was no glue in sight, so I thought “How crazy could this get? She’ll just admire them.”

Wanting to be Involved Mom, I bypassed the row of vinyl-covered chairs lining the edge of the room and sat with my son on the carpet, helping him to construct a train track for the wooden trains. Well, helping might not be the right word. He makes the most imaginative train track configurations I’ve ever seen, and certainly doesn’t need my help. But I wanted to be involved, so if he didn’t need my help, he did have my company. A few minutes later I look up to see how Sequin Girl was doing.

Let’s just say that the hundreds (yes, hundreds) of sequins that formerly had been on the plate were now on the mini picnic table, stuck to my daughter, and mostly on the carpet. I began sweeping, scooping, picking and shoveling them up, alternating techniques as each one proved only slightly effective. Not the most fun part of my day, but then again, moms often do repetitive tasks. It kind of goes with the job. (It reminded me of a brief interaction I had in an elevator last month, when I joked with a man from Wisconsin about “the glamorous life of a mom,” as I scraped my daughter’s abandoned cheese off the carpeted elevator floor.)

Finally, most of the sequins were up and I asked the lady who works upstairs if she wanted me to vacuum the random stragglers. She said no, which didn’t entirely disappoint me (but I would have done it). We were saved from further episodes of Sequins Gone Wrong by the only phrase that could entice my son away from that room. It came from my daughter, and we took it seriously. “Poo Poo.”

Ahhh, the glamorous life of a mom…