No David!

Max's favorite book is No, David! by David Shannon.  

I found this book at the consignment store for $1.00, and it is one of those purchases that has become a special treasure.

Max searches through all of Lucy's girly books until he finds No, David! and then, in his own Maxy-language, he declares that he has found The Book, and he excitedly hopes that someone- anyone!- will read it to him.  On many occasions, Lucy has been the one to read to Max, and Lucy does not yet know how to read, but it works out just fine since every page simply reads, "No, David!" (or another variation of the exclamation "No, David!"). 

You see, David is an active little boy, much like our Max, and through the pages of the book we see him track mud into the house, run down the street naked, splash buckets of water out of the bathtub, play ball in the house, etc., and his mother constantly has to say, "No, David!" 

It just couldn't be more appropriate that Max is drawn to this book because he is a boy that requires constant supervision or else he finds himself in trouble, and even though I watch him like a hawk, I find that I constantly repeat, "No, Max!"

I am a "No!" mom- you know, the kind of mom who is always saying no! no! No! NO!

No, David had been missing for a couple of days.  We looked through all of the bookshelves, and through all of the toys, and through all of the rooms, and we couldn't find the book anywhere.  Max would ask "No Dayday?", and we would respond by continuing the search and calling out for the hiding book, "No, David!", and we finally found it deep under our sofa.  Hooray!  No, David!

It has been a long day of football watching and busy children, and this evening it was quiet for just a few moments as Joe was playing at a neighbor's house, Lucy was watching a movie upstairs, and Max had taken a baggie of Cheerios upstairs to watch the movie with Lucy.  It was almost too quiet.  I cuddled up on the sofa with Devon and announced that this moment was my favorite moment of the day.  He agreed.  We wondered if Max was getting into trouble upstairs, unsupervised.  There were stacks of clean clothes on the bed that he could knock down.  He could splash around in his choice of the two toilets.  He could unplug the TV.  We heard him call down to us, "Mama!  Dada!" 

We called back, "What, Maxy?"

We heard his little feet run from the top of the stairs back to our bedroom. 

Neither of us wanted to get up to go check on him.

We heard him run back again to the top of the stairs.  "Mama!  Dada!"

This time Devon called back, "No, David!"

Max said, "Oh."

We giggled at the fact that he is starting to answer to David.

I yelled up, "No, David!", and I heard him say, "Whaa?"

Devon sighed a big sigh and decided that he should probably go check on our smallest boy, who is becoming more and more like Dennis the Menace.  He left me alone on the sofa- my favorite moment of the day was over.

"OH NO!  MAX!  ANNIE, COME QUICK!"

"Do I have to?"

"YES!  YOU'D BETTER TAKE A LOOK AT THIS!"

I reluctantly climbed the stairs, naive to what I would find-  Max had so many options upstairs- the possibilities were endless!

He had found a hot pink/red lip gloss in the back of my nightstand (darn, I'd forgotten about that gloss!).  He took the gloss to my white Ikea Ektorp chair and ottoman and proceeded to rub it all over his face and hair and my chair.

Devon and I just stared at him.  We were somewhat speechless.  I wanted to laugh, and I kind of wanted to yell, and I definitely didn't want to be the one to clean Max.  No, David!  Okay, what do we do now?

First, we took pictures of the disaster.  Then, Devon put Max in the bathtub and washed his pink hair twice before he was blond again.  I took some Goof-Off to my chair and scrubbed away. 

In the aftermath of the lip gloss fiasco, Max opened our front door and tried to escape, and he pulled a whole box of frosted cookies down from the kitchen counter top and spilled them (leaving Halloween-colored sprinkles all over the floor), and he opened the oven while our dinner was baking, and Devon found the baggie of Cheerios emptied on our bed.

No, David!

Max finished the day by reading his favorite book.