Nerd Parents

"I angry."

As I've posted before, Ainsley has been big into painting.  Right now, she's very monochromatic. She's already had her red period. Right now she's moving into a blue period.  This morning, we had this exchange.

A: Momma! Want new paper!

Me: If you're painting this for Grandma and Grandpa, they like more colors.

A: No.

Me: You're not painting this for Grandma and Grandpa?

A: NO.

Me: Well, you have all this room on the paper left to fill. You're too young to understand the value of negative space.

Sean (from the kitchen): You don't know...maybe she's a prodigy.

Update


While I was writing this blog post, I appeased her by giving her some animal crackers and telling her she wasn't going to get new paper until she filled her page more.  This is the result.

"Momma, I want more
light up blue."

Pumpkins!!

Going to Hilger's

It was sunless and spitty last Sunday when we went to get pumpkins for the house. We were supposed to go on Saturday, but Momma got her drink on Friday night and Just. Couldn't. Do. Anything. on Saturday.  Saturday was beautiful and sunny and lovely...but it wasn't happening.  So Sunday morning, we sent a text to Janine and Daelynn and Big Sarah and let them know we were heading out.

We went to Hilger's because we'd heard there was tons of fun there...and there was. The first big hit of the visit was the tire swings. Xander was a bit to small, so Daelynn pulled him in with her and I gave her some pushes.  Ainsley, however, was the perfect size for the tire horse swing. She rode that one for about 10 minutes.  Luckily, since it was cold and rainy, we were practically the only people there.

I overheard the Hilger's lady say that the day before was "a zoo." So, see kids...you got to play with stuff longer and to yourself because Mommy drinks! Aren't you lucky?!

This was some sort of
pumpkin education center that the kids
didn't really pay attention to...

Behind the barn was a fun area for the kids to run around and play with Big Sarah while Daelynn shopped for her pie hole and Janine and I chat. Janine informed me that they'd covered the hay bales with tarp so the hay wouldn't disintegrate in the dampness. One of my favorite things about hanging with Janine is I get to learn interesting little tidbits like that.

There was this plywood maze thing they made for the kids, and Big Sarah, Ainsley, and Xander had a BALL playing in it.

Daelynn returned with popcorn and then, for Ainsley, it *was on*.  Ainsley will cut you for some popcorn. So, of course, I got her a little bag. She had great fun after that eating and protecting her popcorn.

Because it was raining, the hay rides were canceled, had Ainsley been old enough to know what that meant, she'd have been disappointed...remember she has that weird obsession with hay bales.  Traveling out to the pumpkin patch was also canceled, so we picked our pumpkins from the ones they had gathered in front of the barn.  It's not like we're big into pumpkin patches, per se...so we were cool with that.

Because of her big ole hippie status, Big Sarah was showing the kids how to love and respect all the animals, gourds, etc. As this was DAY TWO of my hangover, I let her. Heh.

Ultimately because it was so wet and rainy, we couldn't stay very long...we picked our pumpkins and left. You can really see how wet the kids got in the picture to the left. No, Xander didn't pee himself, he was just playing in the pumpkins!

All the cool kids drive home
pantless with popcorn.

PAINTING Pumpkins

Ainsley: Brush
Xander: Finger

By far, what's much cooler than getting pumpkins is painting pumpkins. This year, I bought a few of those minipumpkin looking gourds for the kids to paint.  This has proven to be one of the wisest Momma moves I've made!

Day One Pumpkins

So far, we've had two pumpkin painting days...mostly I'm just letting her repaint over the same pumpkins because 1) I'm cheap and 2) she's 3 and doesn't care to complain yet. I'm sure next year each pumpkin will be a Work of Art like each piece of paper is right now.

Ainsley painted one pumpkin as her "princess' pumpkin. It's the one with pink, white, and green.  I find this hilarious!

Often when painting, Xander ends up getting bored and painting on the table, his face, the pumpkin, the high chair, and then just plain trying to eat paint. Thank goodness it's washable and non-toxic.  He's still a bit young for painting, so normally he'll paint a bit and then move to the bathtub.

As she is with everything, Ainsley is a very serious artist. She'll move from color to color, and when painting with the brush is very particular about not mixing the colors together. This makes me happy because I think it'd drive the OCD in me INSANE if her colors were all mixed up. I have a hard enough time when she mixes PlayDough colors together.

When we paint, I'll do some painting, but mostly I'm there to manage the mess.  As you can see from these pictures, this time (Day Two of painting), I'm being instructed by Ainsley when, where, and how to paint, and I'm trying to get Xander to actually paint instead of eating the pumpkin. Look closely at that picture (or click on it to enlarge it)...his mouth is covered with paint because he picked it up to chew on it as I was setting the timer on the camera.

Fingerpainting!

Notice the trifecta of girly coolness in this picture:
Ariel cup, My Little Pony toy, Buffy mug 

My mom bought Ainsley fingerpaints for her birthday. These fingerpaints, specifically. These paints are awesome because they're washable.  Mom got A the primary colors. I must now replace them & get the secondary colors because of A's immense love for them.

I've let A paint several days in a row before I decided that Mr. X needed in on the action. He wasn't really good about getting the paint out of the tray, so I had to squirt it directly onto the paper...once it was there though...It. Was. On.

X will always smile for the camera.

After I went downstairs to snag the camera, I returned to discover that A had painted her face red. Then she started painting her body with each color declaring herself to be Rainbow Dash, one of the My Little Ponies: "I Rainbow Dash!"

I really do love letting them paint...and now Ainsley asks every day, "I paint now?"

Lazy Painting Sunday

Totally not the sign of a scattered mind (or minds)

As I mentioned on the FB today, Ainsley and I fingerpainted. We used the Color Wonder Fingerpaints that Aunt Kat bought for A last Christmas. These finger paints are awesome; once you paint on the paper, it sets the color--so colors don't blend on paper (they do if you mix the paint before putting it on the paper, FYI). I highly recommend them for kids who love to fingerpaint, but wig out if they mix every color together in their hands but don't like their paintings to be all brown.

Flowers and swirls...we stick with what we know

We've spent the morning being lazy. I'm avoiding working on my stuff for classes which start tomorrow. Ainsley started asking to paint as soon as she got up. I told her she had to wait for Xander to go down for a nap...as he's mess without faux paint...I'm just not going there.

Once Xander went down, we started watching The Frog Princess and painting.  I saw this on Pinterest and was inspired to try it out.

First Try

JAZZ HANDS!

Our first try was mostly just playing with our hand prints. She picked the colors for our hands: blue for Ainsley, green for Momma. As we were letting it dry, Ainsley decided that it needed more green...and painted on my green hand print. .

I'm going to try to not consider the symbolism of her trying to blot me out so only her hand prints remain. It took a while for me to get her to understand that if she paints green on my green hands they disappear.

If at first you don't succeed...

Try, try again


This is our second try...pretty successful! It's totally going up in my office.  It's also giving me all sorts of ideas for projects...YAY!