Art is messy

I am more than behind on blogs. I have been taking pictures, but at night or during the boys naps I am so exhausted I end up stepping away from my computer. Also I really want to be practicing my strobes right now, but haven't gotten around to doing it as much as I thought I would. So here I sit with pictures, but not the type I want. Honestly in this photo shoot from this evening I should have taken out my strobes, but today has not been the best day so my brain isn't exactly clear.

I was in mommy & me on Tuesday and a friend of mine with kids the same age told me how much her youngest loves art and he is a boy. I know girls usually love art, but my boys never have the patience or sit still for more than a minute or two so I never do elaborate projects. Even in preschool school many of the kids come home with several art projects, Erik usually has one, maybe two drawings. Stickers on a paper, markers, crayons, play dough, the basics work for us most days.

Well today I decided to try my friends method. She said she puts her son in the highchair with water colors, no shirt and just lets him have fun and he stays there for almost an hour. True enough this stuff washes off well. I thought this might not be a bad idea while I was in the kitchen, to give them a project while I spend those last few minutes pulling dinner together. It is honestly better than them fighting or begging me to play with them. So out came the water colors.

I will admit for all of five minutes they liked painting and were interested in the process. Then Elliot discovered he could paint on himself, and Erik saw him doing it and thought it was a fantastic idea. So our painting slowly deteriorated from painting on paper to painting on bodies. This is why I go crazy, I know it is easy to wipe off, but it drives me a little crazy when they do this and it always happens.

The part that drives me the most crazy is not the body painting I can annoyingly live with that, but they always put the paint in their mouth. I am not sure how to stop this from happening no matter how many times I tell them no. They egg each other on, and then I decide to not paint for a long time because I don't like them ingesting it.

Although, it does wash off super easily, and a three year old is pretty good at washing himself. I don't even need to be in the same room unless I hear more playing than washing.

Are you curious how the final pieces turned out? As you can guess very little paint on the paper, and a lot of paint on their bodies. Total time painting, 10 minutes. Not sure if it is worth it yet. Although in Erik's defense he told me that the water colors weren't working well and wanted real paint. Maybe tomorrow, maybe...

Oh and this is just funny. Erik is obsessed with my long hair and compares it constantly to the movie "Tangled." His obsession includes a lot of stroking, scrunching and putting it in his mouth, yuck! So no surprise that he has been asking to wear hair ties. What a cutie he is.

In our house it is brother see, brother do so of course Elliot insisted on having one too.