Lighten Up, Mommy!

I wrote my first post three days ago and didn't post it until now because my blogger page wasn't pretty enough.  I have been thinking about it since Wednesday and haven't had the time to actually do it. Who cares about what the website looks like!?  No one even knows about my blog!  Why do I have to be so uptight about everything?  Really.  I need to just lighten up.

I have to say, I am trying.  I have two boys and I am just going to have to succumb to the fact that they are going to be messy and that's that.  Yesterday, I pulled out the finger paints for the first time. I was very hesitant about it and probably thought about it for 3 hours before actually going downstairs in the basement to get the supplies. 

Baby was still sleeping so I sat Little Man in his chair, taped paper to the kitchen table, squirted 4 paints on little paper plates and told him to dig in.  He looked at me like I had 5 heads.  What do you mean, mom?  You usually get mad at me when I make a mess?  He didn't say it, but I know he was thinking it.  So, very cautiously he stuck his pointer finger into the red pile of paint and looked at me.  I smiled and said, "go ahead, Little Man, smear it around!"  Well, he LOVED it.  "More red, Mommy!" "More yellow, Mommy! "More green, Mommy!" "More blue, Mommy!"  Then he got very serious about it.  He was determined to cover every square inch of that paper with paint.  I wanted to take a picture of how excited he was but at this point he actually looked mad because of how intent he was on his project.  I told him I would only give him more paint if he showed me his best smile.  This is what I got... 



This little face got him A LOT more paint!

 Then I heard Baby start crying.  Uh-oh, he is up! Thoughts going through my mind: How am I going to get Little Man to be okay with me cleaning this shit up RIGHT NOW? If I let Baby do it he is going to get too messy!  What if he eats it? It's going to get all over his clothes and probably on the floor and the table and the chair.  He is too little!  Stop it, Mommy.  Just let the boy have some fun.  He deserves it.  And just think about how happy it will make him.

I told Little Man I would be right back and I went upstairs to get Baby.  I brought him downstairs barely awake, sat him in his little chair, strapped him in and squeezed out some paints right in front of him.  Boy do I have a reputation!  He thought I had lost my mind.  He is used to me stalking him with wet paper towels and wiping his face and hands every five seconds.  So I took his little chubby hands and smeared them in the paints.  I had Little Man show him exactly how to do it and he certainly got the hang of it pretty quickly.  He was having a blast.  Can you tell...

Needless to say, it was a success!  It was messy, messy, messy but totally worth it!  I actually got ten minutes to myselft to empty the dishwasher while they were totally enthrawled in their painting.  It was really fun for them and great to see smiles on their little faces.

Here are some more pictures of their finger paining project:

After a lot of washcloths, a bath and some kitchen cleaning we were we were back to our squeeky clean selves.  And guess what Little Man had a mini freak out about five minutes later.  "I want more finger painting!!!!!"  "Little Man, we are all done today.  We will do more tomorrow."  "No, Mommy more finger painting, NOW!" 

Instead we dropped some dinosaurs into water and watched them grow.  All was good.

We had a fun day.  Messy and all.