A BIG Mess!!

After reading this you will be glad that my children are not yours!!
Let’s see—where to begin. We were having a great evening. I was getting the kids ready for bed and all was going well. They were cooperating and we were on schedule. I was excited to think that I might even make it to bed early. Then the phone rang. It was Derek’s parents calling to tell Andrew a happy belated birthday. He talked to them and then handed the phone to me. I was updating them on what was going on with us and Derek and then was doing a Google search on the computer while I talked finding info for them. Well, while I was multi-tasking I forgot to add in the task of watching my three wild boys. Oops!! Andrew had talked to his grandparents about the cake he was going to have with green frosting. Apparently that got him thinking about the food coloring so he went to get it, and get it he did. Mind you, it was in the back of a top cupboard in the box and the box was in a ziplock bag. Once he had it the boys decided to open it and it went down hill from there. I think Timothy started it—that’s what Andrew says anyways. He squirted some on the floor. They thought it was funny so they all did it. Then they discovered that when they stepped in it they made footsteps on the floor so they started making footprints. Then somewhere in the mix they started squirting it on each other. Soon they were chasing and squirting each other. My house is set up so you can run a circle from the kitchen through the living room and back into the kitchen and that’s what they did all the while squirting and dripping more food coloring as they went. Too bad I have cream colored carpet in the living room. Needless to say I had to abruptly end my phone conversation.
I stood stunned, uncertain of even what to do and where to begin. The mess was HUGE!! I wanted to scream and cry all at once. I quickly pulled myself together as I knew time was of the essence here if I dared hoped to save the carpet. I knew I had to get the kids out of it and cleaned up so they wouldn’t spread it more but I didn’t have time to clean them and the house. So I sent Brian and Andrew to the bathroom thinking they could wash themselves and I picked Timothy up and put him on the counter. Well that was all a mistake. Brian and Andrew only made a mess of the bathroom as they played in the water and spread food coloring stained water all over. Timothy made a bigger mess on the counter and he wouldn’t stay up there. He kept crawling back down and getting into the mess. So I changed plans and took Brian and Andrew and sat one on each couch and let them sit and watch while I tried desperately to get the coloring from the carpet. I set Timothy on the couch too but of course he didn’t stay. He got up and sneaked back in the kitchen and got the food coloring again. He brought it back to the living room and proceeded to drip it all over the floor again right where I had already cleaned. Can this get any worse—um yeah it does, just keep reading.
Brian and Andrew sat quietly for the first little while but then they got restless and started playing. I was not going to have any of that I was too mad. So I marched them straight upstairs to bed. They cried for a long time but eventually went to sleep. To contain Timothy I strapped him in his high chair so he couldn’t get out (one of the only things he can’t get out of yet) and left him there while I scubbed away for a few hours. Yes I mean hours with an “s.” As I said it was a huge mess. The poor kid cried almost the whole time but what’s a poor mother supposed to do when she has only two hands and there is food coloring everywhere?
I have a Little Green Machine by Bissel (a hand held shampooer). I used that for a couple hours extracting as much dye as I could. Then I switched to my actual carpet shampooer. Once I started using the carpet shampooer I let Timothy out of the high chair. Bad choice! The carpet shampooer I have makes foam. You can use the foam and scrub stubborn spots. So I scooped up some foam and was scrubbing away on a stubborn spot. Well Timothy thought that looked like great fun so he went over and scooped up some foam too and started rubbing it into the carpet with his hands. Well his hands were totally covered in dye and it came off in the foam. It made a nice pink spot on the floor that didn’t come out. Too bad it was on a part of the carpet that was stain free.
Well, after over three hours of hard work I decided I had as much dye out as was going to come out and went upstairs to get ready for bed. Somehow without me noticing Timothy got the jar of Eucerin cream. He opened it and was scooping out the cream and spreading it on himself. When I found him he was covered in it. He had so much all over his head that it looked like it had been frosted. It was really thick. Eucerin is not water soluble so it was very hard to clean off. I shampooed his hair 4 times and it was still greasy all the next day. Needless to say I was very glad to finally get that kid to bed and be done with him. Through all this he went through 3 pairs of pajamas—one covered in food coloring, one covered in foam, and one covered in Eucerin. What a night! So much for my initial thoughts of getting to bed early, I finally made it to bed at about 2 am.
I’m sure you are wondering how the carpet turned out. Well, it’s cream with pink polk-a-dots. It doesn’t look too bad until the sun shines on it and then what I see makes me almost positive they will make us replace the carpet when we move out. Yea! The doorway from the kitchen to the living room is still pretty bad. You can see all the drip marks still and they are pretty dark. Too bad those are all the drops from Timothy’s second round. So if anyone has any great ideas of how to remove red food coloring from cream colored carpet please let me know. The blue, green, and purple came out. It’s mostly just the red and some yellow that remains.
The boys were, and still are, covered in dye too. Timothy’s face was totally covered. It was like cherry red with some blue dripped down the side when I found them. The next day when I was talking to Andrew about it he laughed and said how funny it was because Timothy looked like Darth Maul. (Yes, Andrew is a Star Wars fan and if you don’t know—Darth Maul is the bad guy from Episode I with the red and black face).
Never a dull moment at our house that’s for sure! At least now a few days later I can laugh about it all. Good thing I love my wild children. At least the carpet got shampooed and the floor got mopped before Derek got home!:)