A mom of three could not believe the scene that greeted her when she went to investigate what her twin toddlers had gotten up to while they were left momentarily unattended.
Katherine Fehily, a mom-of-three and sleep consultant based in Dallas, Texas, told Newsweek the chaos started when her husband decided to make a “quick” trip to the store, leaving their young daughter Aspyn alone with Ridge and Jameson.
They were only alone for a few minutes but that was more than enough time for the boys to run riot. Fehily said: “I was blissfully typing work emails upstairs when my daughter Aspyn burst in like an emergency alert, telling me: ‘Mommy, you need to come downstairs now! It’s a mess!'”
Many Americans believe boys are easier to raise than girls. In a 2018 Gallup poll, 54 percent of respondents said boys were easier to raise while just 27 percent said the same of girls.
Fehily might have a thing or two to say on the subject after this particular day. As she walked downstairs to investigate, she encountered something that momentarily stopped her in her tracks.
“Halfway down the stairs, I spotted a red trail that looked suspiciously like something from a horror movie,” she said. “Then I turned the corner and—surprise!—there stood my two boys, cackling like they’d just pulled off the heist of the century.”
Fehily shared the footage on Instagram, under the handle tinytransitions. In the clip, a thick red substance can be seen covering the walls and floor of her home. An onscreen caption is keen to stress that while it “might look like a murder scene” it is not…yet.
As it turned out, Ridge and Jameson had found their way into the small bottles of MiO liquid the family uses to flavor water. The boys were covered in the stuff and so was everything else.
“Their hands and feet were painted red, the remnants of whatever chaos they’d concocted, and they were leaving a crime scene of red footprints all over the carpet,” Fehily said.
Katherine Fehily’s husband only left the kids alone for a couple of minutes. When she checked in, she was greeted with chaos.
TinyTransitions/Instagram
“Like mini criminals, they took off running, giggling, and adding to their masterpiece. I finally cornered them, scooped all three kids up, fully clothed, and plopped them in the tub like they were about to enter a wet and wild version of prison.”
Fehily commanded them to “stay” and then set about cleaning up the mess.
“That, my friends, is what happens when you leave three toddlers alone for five minutes,” she said. “It’s not just a mess; it’s an art installation titled ‘Chaos in Crimson.'”
Though some might have been too stressed or too angry to document what happened, Fehily is glad she got footage of the sorry scene that greeted her on camera. “This was a once-in-a-lifetime scene that needed to be captured—like a nature documentary but with way more giggles and chaos,” she said.
While she joked that it might make for good “future blackmail material” with her kids, she also saw the incident and her video of it as providing “proof of parenting reality.”
“Sometimes, you need evidence to show just how wild life with toddlers can be. It’s a great reminder that I’m not alone in the parenting struggle,” she said.
A keen advocate of the idea that laughter is the best medicine, Fehily also figured the rest of her family would have a “good chuckle” at it all.
She certainly feels stronger for having overcome what was a stressful incident. “If you can survive a toddler crime scene, you can handle pretty much anything life throws your way,” she said.
