Hazards of Painting with Children

I don't even remember anybody even saying it was time to paint.

We had been doing schoolwork when we decided to take a little break and put a cake in the oven. While I was doing that, Joshua decided it would be a good time to open the manila art paper I had picked up for him that morning. I heard "the littles" getting stuff out in the family room- aka the studio- but thought well, okay. I'll just clean this up here in the kitchen. So they are getting brushes and water and the bottled craft paint, which was fine, sure, whatever. Then I hear this swush-swush sound, the sound of paint being forcefully squeezed from a bottle. I went to investigate, and Josh was putting big puddles of paint on his paper. Anna was daintily setting up her palette on a sheet of paper, but they were both sitting on the floor. Where else were we supposed to do it, darling daughter asked. How about the TABLE?!

Okay, well, be more careful. I sat down at the dining room table (opens to family room) and started trying to sketch out a picture I was going to paint later. I was not very far along, I swear, when Anna said, "Mom, you do NOT want to come in here!" Well, at my house, that is code for "someone made a really big mess." And sure enough... Well, the pictures are self-explanatory. Josh was laughing his head off as I dragged him to the shower, giggling and trying to hug everyone as he passed.

I guess if you get to the point where you take a picture instead of yell over something like that, it is a sign of maturity. Or something?