She was only unsupervised for a few minutes...

I had just arrived home, after picking up BallFiend from kinder and Thumper from creche. BallFiend was desperate to play with one of his toys (just recently received as a birthday present) and he raced down our long hallway to the back of the house to get started. I followed, assuming Thumper would be right behind me, and began helping BallFiend unpack the many, many pieces of the toy.

After a few minutes I realised that Thumper:
a) had not followed us down the to back room yet (she is usually right behind BallFiend), and
b) was very, very quiet.

Not a good sign. I hurried back to where she had last been seen, by the front door. And immediately realised I had left the door to our study open. Thumper had of course gone straight to my desk and armed herself with implements of destruction: black and red markers.

As I walked into the room, I found her drawing on the lid of a plastic tub. Thinking I'd got off lightly, I opened my mouth to start "the Talk" but she got in first... She took one look at me, put on a defiant face (presumably to mask the guilty one), re-capped the red marker and marched over to the drawer saying, in very matter-of-fact manner, "I'm just putting this away". She opened the drawer and placed the red marker inside.

It was then that I noticed the black scribbles all over the drawer-front of my beautiful 1960s Danish teak writing desk. I love this desk, I have had it since I was about 16 years old, before that it was my father's and originally it was my grandfather's desk. It's the sort of thing you pay a small fortune for in trendy vintage/retro furniture stores these days.

So anyway, I freaked out just a little bit and Thumper promptly burst into tears and ran away. I ran for a microfibre cloth and started scrubbing. Thankfully the marks came off, so either I was lucky and she had actually used a black whiteboard marker, rather than a permanent marker, or I just got onto it quickly enough.

Either way, I am going to be a lot more vigilant now. Next thing you know, she'll be out tagging trains.
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