02 Jan Never Promise a Craft Day When Starting A Diet

Maybe I should have seen this one coming.  I should have known better than to promise paints to my preschoolers on the second day of a diet.  But I did and I was awoken by two eager little kiddos this morning, asking:  “Can we paint now?  Can we paint now?”  They wouldn’t stop until I grudgingly got up and showered. They horsed down their breakfasts so that they could get their paint aprons on.  Who knew that was so exciting?! 

I thought we would start simply and see how it all went, so we began with a couple of favorites, the ladybug and the bumble bee.  Can’t go wrong, I thought.  The colors were simple to start;  just red, black and yellow.

Friend, I learned a lesson today.  Don’t try to get your kids to conform to your vision! I had a picture in my head of how we would paint perfect little ladybugs and bubble bees. But my kids had no intention of staying within those imaginary lines! They wanted to play with the paints and colors and get messy.  They wanted to mix and splatter and experiment. In a matter of minutes, we ended up with paint all over the place, mixed in together and all over little fingers and hands, even in hair bows and hair.  How does that happen?!  It’s not a good plan when you’re already hangry! And I thought I was being so smart, keeping things confined to Styrofoam plates!

Know When to Quit

I’ll be honest, my nerves couldn’t take this much longer than 15 minutes and I had to shut it down. Poor babies.  We’re going to have to do that in the bathtub from now on.  Or something.  We quickly switched gears and I offered Clark to do either Explode the Code or Horizons Math K1 and he chose math.   Luci insisted on doing Explode the Code, which typically involves naming the pictures and coloring them.  At least it brought a little sanity back.

I’ll be sure to be a little more aware before I promise a craft day.