Wordless Wednesday...

...with an explanation.

I'm always hesitant to pull out paint. i've grown braver as addie has gotten older, but i've never let the little girls paint.

until the other day.

how else can you make a snow scene or "drive" through a snowstorm without white paint?

so i put the table (we all love it, gramma!) in the foyer and carefully taped down the babies' papers. everyone got their own paper plate of paint, a q-tip and later a plateful of matchbox cars!

we made beautiful snow pictures with q-tips and then i poured paint on a new sheet of paper and they drove cars through it...creating a snow storm.

and had a blast!

i only had to clean paint out of one mouth. the table easily wiped clean. i think we managed to keep it all in one location. and we made 6 wonderful creations!

that is until i went to wash the cars off and realized i could hear audrey kate and addie in her room, but it was eerily quiet in the foyer.

yeah...i should NOT have left the 500 count q-tip box where Anne Perry could reach it.

but everybody helped clean up, some more willing than others!

and just in case you're wondering, we painted the next day (and the next) too ;-)

Coloring

We could learn a lot from crayons; some are sharp, some are pretty, some are dull, while others bright, some have weird names, but they all have learned to live together in the same box. ~Robert Fulghum

I love crayons. I love all the colors. I love how they ever so slightly stick to the paper. I don't like their smell right now. I don't like how they get everywhere when they get wet. And I sure don't like how easily they break! But that's beside the point.

We let Addie try out crayons a few months ago. Too early. She ate the point of at least three, dropped them all on the floor, and had not a clue what to do with them. Besides that, they were way too small for her tiny hands. Ironic.

While out shopping one day, I found these (along with finger paints, but we're definitely not there yet!):

Made especially for little hands.

I pulled them out this past weekend. They work great. Mostly.

Addie had a ball.

I was a tad concerned about the toxicity of the nontoxic crayons. I had good reason to be!

She was not.

You see, because now:

One of these things is not like the others,

One of these things just doesn't belong,

Can you tell which thing is not like the others

By the time I finish my song?

You see the difference in these two crayons? Yeah. Little Bit decided not only to stick the blue one in her mouth but to bite it right off! It ended up all in her mouth, all over her mouth, and on her shirt.

Bottom line: she did a great job coloring, had fun, and has begged to do it again! I'd call that quite a success!