Sunday, March 15, 2009

Fun w/ Arts & Crafts!

In one of Brendan's recent pieces of "Brendan's mail," the little magazine (BabyBug, I believe?) shows a colorful caterpillar that you can make from a cardboard egg carton. Upon first read (and every time thereafter), he has WANTED to make that caterpillar. BOY has he. So I finally got my act together to BUY eggs in a cardboard carton ;), get kid-friendly, washable paints (thank heaven!), and we found time this a.m. to sit outside and make the caterpillar. Easy enough, right??

WRONG.

Beautiful, sunshiny day. Don't underestimate the eagerness of a toddler, though, when going at it with paint brushes. I got these NIFTY new brushes that are chunky handles, and have the paint INSIDE the handle. Refillable, you squeeze the handle, and the paint comes out, into the brush. No more rinsing brushes, worrying about mixed colors so they're all mixed together and the color of poo, easy, individual brushes w/ easy-made paint! NOPE. Clearly, several years of advanced education weren't a necessity to make these darn brushes work. One had to unscrew the brush top, peel off a little seal, then rescrew brush before smooshing paint out. Of the 5 colors, only 2 were usable. Truly. I could open the yellow, but took me the entirety of the project to get the brush to screw back on. I got the red, but it didn't screw on perfectly, then I was unable to REMOVE it again, so it's cock-eyed at best, but it works. The other three, well, let's just say he "pretend painted" with them while alternating w/ the real thing. *sigh*

THEN, shall we mention how less-than-amused he was when he got paint on his hands, and would proceed to wipe anywhere and everywhere? Again, read, WASHABLE. Thankfully. Mind you, this was AFTER having him change his clothes into "messy" clothes, in preparation of this happening, which created a firestorm of hysterics like I NEVER anticipated. ;)

Ah well. We got 4 of 6 painted, he was covered in red & yellow, I was also covered, and three brushes sit untouched. Here's to starting arts & crafts escapades w/ a 2-yr old!! :)

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