And We Painted!

Sometimes, you just never know how things are going to turn out. Since someone in our family has been sick the entire month of February, our poor little house has suffered terribly. For the past two weeks, I couldn't see my kitchen counters. I'd get the kitchen cleaned up just enough to cook and make another mess. And laundry! Wow! I could have probably fit all of the dirty clothes in a full size baby crib.

Since Allison was just one day out from having her last fever, we didn't go to church yesterday morning. Not only did I not want her to spread anything to another child, but I didn't want her to get anything from someone else. I spent the entire morning cleaning the kitchen...the ENTIRE morning! So later that afternoon when Jackson asked me if he could paint, the last thing I wanted to do was clean off the kitchen table that is cursed to always have tons of miscellaneous items on top of it. I decided not to seek my own but to deny myself and clean the table so my child could paint. I'm so glad that I did because he and Allison had a great time and Jason and I really enjoyed the show!

It all started out with some paint, a pink plate, paintbrushes and a long strip of paper. Jackson was going to paint the paper and he wanted me to paint with him.

Allison was not going to be a non-participant. Forget that! She saw all of those tiny bottles on the table and the cup of paintbrushes and it was all so irresistible. I sat her on the table to let her try her hand with a paintbrush (rather than finger paints). She dove right in:

But I didn't foresee this happening (and it happened so quickly):

I should have known she'd put paint in her mouth:

Lovely!

And Jackson was not happy when she mixed the paint. "Mommy! She's going to make all brown paint!"

It made gray instead, so he made a road:

Going for the bottom of the foot:

Now that is concentration:

Forget the paper! Allison is a much better canvas!

I remember him saying, "Allison, lift your leg." And up it went:

She stood up so he could get all of her legs:

Jason didn't like the idea of that paint being on her skin for very long, so we took her up and hosed her off in the bathtub. While I was upstairs bathing Alli, Jackson yelled for me, "Mommy! Would you come down here for a minute?" I went downstairs to watch him paint. He was sitting in the chair with the paintbrush close to his foot. He asked me, "If I get paint on my foot, will I have to take a bath and will you make me wash my hair?" LOL!! He doesn't like having to wash his hair but he wanted to paint his feet so badly because he wanted to make footprints on the paper. I wasn't going to steal his joy, so I just told him that he wouldn't have to wash his hair unless he got paint in it. And off he went:

Beautiful footprints! We even used them today to talk about how you can tell which shoe goes on which foot and why.

And I just never imagined that a request for painting would have turned out that way. What fun!


P.S. Notice how Allison is wearing one of Jackson's shirts? She's been wearing them a lot this past week. Jason asked me, "How come we're putting Jackson's shirts on Allison?" LOL!! It's a new fashion statement for her! No really, it's because it got hot here in Montgomery all of a sudden and she has hardly any short sleeved clothes in her new size (and the ones she does have were in that huge pile of dirty clothes); plus, I was trying to keep air circulating near her skin so that her fever wouldn't get out of control.