Peanut Butter Problems

Saturday night, Austin found a large spoonful of peanut butter on the kitchen counter, which had been abandoned by Hans, who likes to eat peanut butter off a spoon. He put the peanut butter between his hands and smeared it around until it melted, and proceeded to paint peanut butter handprints along the wooden paneling of the peninsula in the kitchen. Luckily I caught him before he could make a sixth handprint and the mess ended there. The mess was small enough that I kind of chuckled about it and thought it would be fun to post a picture of it on this blog. I left the handprints there another day until I found our missing camera. Then I took a couple pictures and finally cleaned it up. It turns out that waiting to clean it up for a photo-op probably wasn't a good idea, as you will find out after reading the rest of this post.

Austin's peanut butter artwork

Hans, Austin, Jennabee, and I stayed home tonight while Joseph, Grant, and Joe went to baseball. We were hanging out downstairs and after about 5 or 10 minutes I realized Jennabee had left us and gone upstairs. I went up to get her and just about died when I reached the living room. She loves to mimic nowadays and leaving Austin's peanut butter handprints on the wall for too long must have made her want to do the same. Peanut butter was everywhere! Painted all over the textured walls. All over my piano bench. Huge globs of it were plastered on her hands and face. Her expensive little soft soled shoes were covered in it and had left about thirty thick footprints of peanut butter ground into the carpet. I tracked the footprints to the pantry where either Austin or Hans had opened a jar of peanut butter and left it on the lowest shelf without closing the pantry door. I was frustrated with myself for not keeping a closer eye on Jennabee, but let it go, focused, and got to work. Jennabee went straight into the bathtub and got cleaned up. Once she was taken care of I attacked the walls, followed by the carpet (which was the most difficult), the piano bench, and finally ended with the sticky mess left in the pantry. Her soft soled shoes are sitting in the sink still waiting to be washed.

They say that every cloud has a silver lining and I did manage to find something positive in this situation. My wooden piano bench is shinier and glossier than it has been in years. Who knew peanut butter would work better than those dust sprays they sell in the store?