Chocolate Pudding, Markers, and two small outlaws

Okay. You have to understand something, first. We have locked the boys in their bedroom every night for a long time, for their own safety and our peace of mind. Before we did this, BC would sneak out every night, and get into things he could get hurt with or hurt someone else with... Out of sheer curiosity and wanting to "experiment" and see how various things, forbidden things, work. Like matches. Yes, matches. So we started locking their door at night, because they were stealthy. And ruthless. And no other incentive or disciplinary action worked. We caught a lot of flack from a lot of people about the door-locking, and after a long time of doing this, the husband decided we should "give them a chance" and see what they do. Plus, he was tired of having to get up at random times to let Butch and Sundance out to go to the bathroom. We were hoping they would seize the opportunity to be "big boys" and show some restraint. We. Were. Wrong.

At approximately 4AM ( we are basing this on the last time I was up feeding LLL, and therefore knew they were still sleeping) the outlaws crept out of their rooms in a ninja-like fashion and swiped 9 pudding cups, a host of markers and some crayons, and returned to their hideout (aka the boys' bedroom) and proceeded to "decorate". They splattered and threw pudding all over their walls in a manner that would have pleased Jackson Pollock immensely. It looked like a gorilla had gotten angry and slung poo all over it's cage. Or two gorillas. They also drew enough marker and crayon pictures all over the room to make it look as if a caveman decided to write a novel. Picture my face walking into this hellhole. I was furious. And tired of cleaning up their massive messes (they have emptied their closet and dresser of its contents SEVERAL times). So I decided that when they got home from preschool, that they would clean it up.

This was one small section of the wall. The entire room looked like this.

I handed them blue plastic gloves, magic erasers and wet rags, and sent them to work. I felt a lot like the prison guard in "Cool Hand Luke" overseeing the proceedings. No one wanted to play "rabbit", however. They thought that cleaning was fun for about the first 10 mins, and the next 2 hours were pure drudgery. There was begging. There was pleading. There was no mercy, until it was all clean. Hopefully, this will at least give them pause next time.