If you are ever unfortunate enough to experience a ride in my filthy car, this is what you would see when you look up. I know, crazy right? Everyday the marks somehow seem to grow and encompass more of the roof area. Every time my Mom gets into my car, she literally cringes when she looks up. Yesterday I stopped by my sisters work to say Hi and she was talking to me through the passenger side window and inadvertently looked up at the roof and screamed. I started laughing because she is the cleanest person, next to my mother you will find. You will never find either of their homes or cars in any state of disarray. I am the full black sheep in the family when it comes to living with chaos and a messy house and car.
You are probably wondering how the heck I could let Tiara color on the ceiling of my car. Well, it goes like this.
We are on our way out of the house to go for an errand or our daily trip to Target and she walks out the door with her crayon box. When I take it out of her hands and attempt to leave it in the house, she immediately plops down onto the floor. Strike position. At that point I contemplate, how bad do I need to get her into the car? If I am on my way to meet a friend for a walk, I desperately need her in the car because without my exercise and conversational therapy with my friends I would be a basket case. If it is a daily trip to Target I can pass, but I know she will change her mind in 30 minutes and then I will be at risk of running late for something else. So about 95% of the time, I pick up the crayons and say “ok, you can take your crayons if you walk out to the car nicely.” She gets up and walks to the car.
Once in the car she starts coloring on her paper but at some point she pulls down the visor to stare at her reflection in the mirror. As she pulls down the visor I think her eyes get a glimpse of the ceiling. In the beginning she must have thought “Hey look how boring and grey this looks! I need to fix it.” At that moment she swiped her crayon across the ceiling before I could stop her.
I yell for her to stop, she stops and apologizes and we have one crayon mark on the ceiling. Each day when she gets in the car, at some point when I am focused on my driving, she manages to add a few more strokes to her canvas before I catch her. Today I started laughing out loud as she looked up and declared. “Mom, pretty, pretty” and pointed to her drawings on the ceiling. Everyday I swear I will go out there when she is doing something else and try to clean it with my magic sponge, but as you can see from the picture, I have yet to do it.
My biggest crayon concern in regards to my car is the crayons that have melted into the air conditioning vents. I know, I know, such a potential problem. Luckily all her crayons are non-toxic but what happens when they melt into the vents? I can only imagine I am going to run into a big problem in the future.
Once again you are probably thinking, “why the hell does she leave the crayons in the car and let them melt all over the seats and into the vents?’ Answer: Once I am able to convince her to exit the car, I have to guide her inside or she may run down the street. You may now be thinking ” why doesn’t she walk Tiara into the house and then go back outside and clean out the car?” Good idea! The problem is that if I walk out the front door, Tiara walks out the front door, too. No one can leave via the front door without Tiara trying to follow behind. She normally just wants to plop down on the bench on the front porch but then will refuse to budge. Since I don’t enjoy sitting on my front porch for endless hours doing nothing, I avoid letting her out the front door unless we are leaving.
So that is the story of the crayon mural on the ceiling of my car which is only 8 months old. Oh well, it’s just a thing…
Happy Friday and hope you have a wonderful weekend! Trinity has the day off today and we planning on painting her desk, wish me luck!
xoxo tiffani
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Hi Tiffani,
I can not tell you how WONDERFUL and PEACEFUL it was to just read your post. I myself have 3 beautiful children age 10 (girl), age 8 (boy) with adhd like crazycakes and age 3 Hudson (boy) with TSC2. Don’t get me wrong I would LOVE to have a perfectly clean and spotless minivan like most of my friends but do not have either the luxury of time or effort. It just is not that high on the priority list.. We have not come to coloring on or in the car and seems bringing crayons into the car is a good thing for us to avoid beginning. I TOTALLY get how your car looks that way when we finally reach our home Hudson is usually so wiped out or fed up with being restrained in a car seat or stroller for so long that he just needs to get out and play. He must be supervised at all times so running back to the car for all the extra blanket or shoes etc is just not happening. Thank you for your brutal honesty, you have made my day. I said “oh thank God someone else gets it and would not judge me”. Let’s face it crayons on the roof of the car never killed anyone. Have a great weekend. Wendi
Thanks for your comment, you just had me laughing! You are so right, crayon marks on the roof of the car never killed anyone! Being a TSC Mom really puts life in perspective. Have a great weekend!