The artists formerly known as my children

Michael turned 38 the other day. To celebrate, I had the children finger paint him drawings of various things (princesses, boats on the ocean, and squiggles) and present them to him. I had put the drawings in an envelope and put them on the bench with the wine and gift I had chosen.
By the time Michael arrived home from work on his birthday, the kids were exhausted, still wearing their blue painted clothes, and I was sleeping on the couch with them.
Michael opened the door, took a look around at the pink and blue streaked table, poked his head at the bathroom sink covered in blue fingerpaints, and the fingerprinted fridge where Declan had tried to locate the apples.
"Ash?" he said, shaking me awake. "Every year the birthday surprises get stranger. I mean, last year the kids gave me a drooled-on-box. But this year, they gave me my house as a piece of post modernist art in progress."