Budding Artists

It all started with a lot of sunshine and consequentially the need for sidewalk chalk. Unfortunately the store we were in only had one box of sidewalk chalk and as probably know I have two girls.  We might have been able to walk away with just the one box of sidewalk chalk had Liberty taken it off the shelf but Emmuska spied it first, plucked it off the shelf and dumped it in her basket. There was no explaining to Liberty that Emmuska had chalk and that she too would be able to use it (it's a complicated mix of past experience and her unique personality...) So rather than try to fight a battle I knew I wasn't going to win I let her be happy with what she pulled off the shelf and didn't insist that she put it back (you can think I'm too soft and I'd probably agree with you...)  So what was the mysterious product I allowed Liberty to purchase in lieu of sidewalk chalk? Drum roll please!

That's right - finger paint! Some days I'm fairly certain I'm a psychiatric evaluation short of being certifiably crazy. Seriously not sure what I was thinking when I agreed to this undertaking. I know I put some thought into this (notice the big purple shirt Liberty is wearing? Proof that I was indeed thinking ahead) as I did do it outside and had my camera ready to take pictures.  As it turns out it just wasn't ready enough.  The picture above is moments after Liberty dumped half of the orange container out while I was trying to get Emmuska's paint ready.

While I was trying to rescue the rest of the orange paint (simultaneously reaching for my camera in a mad effort to chronicle the proceedings) Samuel spied the large pile of paint and made a beeline for it.

But was distracted by the still open and half full container of paint. (Children seem to have an inner guide about what will be the biggest mess...)

Having rescued the container of orange paint I turned around to find that Samuel had happily reached his original goal...

And he was loving it. (By the way - don't let the whole bare skinned knees on a concrete surface fool you - this boy can move across, well any surface, with alacrity. When on a rough surface he does this by crawling on his hands and feet - bear crawl style - impressively fast. I'm thinking I should enter him in a race of some kind.)

And then he had to taste his masterpiece to make sure it was just right. Doesn't everybody?

Said masterpiece apparently required a lot of fancy foot work to complete given by how much paint ended up on them...

Meanwhile Liberty and Emmuska were very happily working on their masterpieces. One thing I would like to do differently about this activity next time (beside the whole orange all over incident...) would be to have an extra couple of hands to help with Samuel so I could focus more on doing this with Liberty - helping her perfect the art of covering one's hand and slapping them on paper. (Okay that doesn't sound as technical or requiring of instruction as it did in my head...)

Emmuska too was busy making her work of art - just the right amount of blue right now.

What's this?

Apparently her masterpiece is on Samuel's back. Naturally he's only too happy to oblige. (Generally we can end that sentence at He's happy - paint's a bonus.)

I can't really fault Emmuska's logic. Samuel makes a great canvas - a face like that can't help but add to the work.

However all this gave Liberty a bright idea...interestingly enough all the colors combined do a pretty good job of matching her shirt. We'll just assume she's really good at combining colors until they become the exact shade she needs.

According to the time stamp on my camera the entire event lasted less than twenty minutes.  I'm quite certain the cleanup took at least that long (baths all around!) But it was twenty minutes of fun.  And just maybe I learned enough from this time around to be better prepared for next time.