Lynne, happy for a chance to eat beakfast in peace and maybe even work a crossword puzzle, goes downstairs. She takes a bit of time preparing the cereal. She finds a real stumper in the Games Magazine. She gets the pencil poised to write.
Then from upstairs: "Uhhhh... Lynne? I think we're going to need a little help up here."
"What kind of help?" she yells up the stairs as she makes her way to the landing, confused at how mothers-day-gift-making could have gone wrong in four minutes.
Then, at the top of the stairs, she sees Matt and Mark. The baby is stripped down to his diaper. And he is blue. Blue hands, blue arms, a blue belly, blue feet, bits of blue hair. Matt's green shirt is smattered with blue handrints. And behind them, in the doorway of Mark's room, is a scattered array of white paper and smeared blue paint.
"What happened?" Lynne asked, laughing. Mark, who was getting bluer by the second, laughed too.
"Well," Matt explained, "I wanted Mark to put his handprints on paper for you, so you could have them for Mother's Day." A thoughtful idea, Lynne agreed. "But," Matt admitted, "it got out of hand very quickly." Lynne agreed about that, too.
They ran a bath for Mark to de-blue him. And they all laughed a lot. And in the end, Lynne ended up with a wonderful Mother's Day Gift after all: a hilarious story that she can hold over Matt's head for the rest of their married life. And a picture of Mark that's sure to impress his first high school girlfriend.
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