When it comes to entertaining the kids, Tracey and I have similar approaches but our methods differ ever so slightly. She likes to get them building a sheet cubby house or making things. I like to turn on the telly.
Yes, I know her way is much better for the kids, but mine takes less effort to clean up.
Like today…
“I set them up on the balcony with paints,” Tracey explained to me when I arrived home. She figured that would buy her half an hour to work her magic editing photos. She’d just about finished her session at her laptop when a little hand started tugging on her arm.
“Mummy, can I have a bath?” Miss3 asked her, only she says ‘baff’ not ‘bath’ because she’s super-cute, a factor which may have saved her today.
“Not now,” Tracey told her. “We have baths after dinner. I just need to finish this-” Then she saw her. “What the hell have you- DON’T TOUCH ME!”
Holding Miss3 out in front of her like a sack of excrement, Tracey walked her to the bathroom.
“Every step I took I saw more mess, more paint,” Tracey told me. Not just any paint either, Metallic paint. “She must have been roaming around the house for ten minutes.”
Naturally I tut-tutted and put on my sympathetic face, but I’m secretly thrilled. Usually it’s me
I have a propensity for making easy parenting tasks appear difficult. I can start out changing a nappy and end up needing to change both my clothes and the doona cover.
I once got up to make breakfast for the kids, letting Tracey sleep in, and ended up with one child puffed up like a toadfish at the ER. Yes, I’m that good. I could write books. They’d have snappy titles like ‘Whatever you’re doing, stop it’, and all chapters could start with the line, ‘I knew I was in trouble when…’.
In all, it took Tracey over an hour to clean up. And even when I arrived home she was still finding little pockets of paint splatter all over the house – the drum seat, the toilet seat. And the bath! It looks very nice now – all sparkly.
I just had one question. “Did she get any on the paper?’
“Not a drop.”
Gloating? Much.
im so glad to see my daughter is not the only kid to enjoy running around naked lol, what a beautiful picture, and even tho a mess was made, some beautiful memories got made too!
My boys did this. With food colouring. Mummy was not impressed
My child did it on three walls as high as she could reach at 4 in mixed media , she’s a very talented artist . It took 3 coats of paint to get rid of.
Reminds me of when my neice was a Miss 3 (now 13) and her mum let her outside with her friends to paint… they did very well at painting the dog (mini foxy cross named Bubbles, she’s the size of a small cat) instead of the paper.
Bruce if wrote a book I would buy one, and then a copy for all my frineds who are pregnant as a baby shower gift. Get to work man.