The Baby Powder Affair

When Mama is out with friends for an evening and I am the lone parent at home with very little children, there is a general expectancy for everything to go swimmingly based on a number of good experiences over these last five years. But it has recently been demonstrated that it is not impossible for things to occasionally go haywire for Daddy in these scenarios.

Thursday night was going well early on. We played hide-and-seek and tag and we read books. Then a very common thing happened when the children began playing just amongst themselves. I took a seat to check on the World Series game, while the sound of children playing assured me that they were fine. …but that sound faded…

A little while later, Richmond cried out as if he had been wronged and I encouraged him to come tell me all about it…which he would normally do without hesitation. But he didn’t come. So I turned the corner of the hallway to see him standing stunned at the other end of the hall. Suddenly, I shared the stunned look as I wondered how and why the boy had ended up completely covered in a white powder. When I say completely covered, you may be tempted to think that I am overstating it a bit. I’m not.

I approached him at the doorway of his room and smelled that it was baby powder…and it seemed like a manageable situation, until I looked into his room and observed that his sisters and every square inch of his room were just as covered as he was. I didn’t even know that a bottle of baby powder would go that far. There were sheepish looks on little girls’ faces, and there was an attempt to start “cleaning” when Ella Kathryn turned to a fabric covered chair and began rubbing the powder back and forth on the seat. Needless to say, I quickly pointed out that the thoughtful effort was not actually helping the situation.

So three children went straight to the bathtub while I attacked the room with a vacuum cleaner…which worked well on the chair, ottoman, diaper-changing table, side-table, lamp shade, carpet, diaper bag, shoes, and door handle. But for all of the nicely washed and folded clothes that Richmond had pulled out onto the floor…those had to go in the wash again.
By the time Mama returned home, the only evidence of the event was the girls’ wet hair from bath time, the distinct aroma of baby powder everywhere, and of course, multiple eye-witness testimonies.