The Paintbrush Police

The boys received Paint-Your-Own-Soccer ball kits for Christmas. They had a big painting party this morning, painting their balls, and mixing paint colors just for the mess fun of it. Elliot actually painted his ball a few days ago, but joined in the fun mixing paint colors in a bowl. His supplies had already been used up, so I set him up with one of the two paintbrushes that came in Jack's kit, and some paint that we had in the house. Everything was going splendidly, until Jack realized that Elliot was using one of his paintbrushes. *sigh* Jack jumped up and yelled something like, "Elliot's using my paintbrush. Aaaaaaah. Mama, I want Elliot to give back my paint brush right now!" Luckily, it was early enough in the morning that I was feeling fresh, and my brain was still lively enough to move fast on its feet. I stopped, leaning my head to one side like I was listening and said, "Oh no! I think I hear the paint brush police coming right now!" Silence fell over the whole room, as six little eyes turned to me. It had worked so well that I couldn't resist carrying it further. "The paintbrush police drive in a police car with a giant paintbrush on top, that spins around with a flashing light when their siren is on. Can you hear their siren in distance?" More silent stares followed; still no one had made a sound. "And do you know what the paintbrush police do if they catch someone who has stolen a paintbrush? (Six big eyes stared at me then.) They take that boy in the middle of the night and paint him his least favorite color from head to toe, so that when he wakes up in the morning he is covered in his least favorite color!" Amidst lots of giggles, and with a laughing smile on his face, Elliot  broke the silence. "Ding dong!" he said. Laughter erupted all around.

Ding dong is a sort of silly code word that Elliot devised last summer at Grammy Camp. He says it when someone is teasing him and he either wants to call them on their teasing, or make sure that they are in fact teasing. My dad likes to tease a lot. My kids have never liked teasing much, so Elliot came up with that remark in reply to Pop Pop's teasing. Apparently he employed it during his whole stay in Berwyn, but I didn't know about it, and didn't actually hear the word until we were all in Berwyn for Thanksgiving. Ted and I  really thought it was a clever response. Everyone liked it so much that it stuck. So, thank you paintbrush police. Thank you doorbell. We had a great time this morning. I'm so glad to have those silly moments to remember instead of a big meltdown!