My Children Are Human Paint Brushes.

With the weather finally turning to winter around here, the little monkeys are being confined to indoors more and more (and are home from kindy & playcenter this week because of colds!).

Who has any ideas for fun stuff to do when you're trapped inside?

Today I set the kids up in the kitchen with a large sheet of paper and some paint. I thought it would keep them occupied while I got some graphic work done... Of course, I was too busy snapping pics of the chaos to do any work, but it was a great way to spend an hour!

Recently I went to a four year old's birthday party and had a discussion with a couple of mums regarding messy play. Most regarded it with horror, even while saying "I'd love to let my little ones get messy but.. the clean up..."

Yes, clean up can be a mission, but look, it's so worth it! Nice clean tidy structured play is all well and good.... But my challenge to those who fear chaos is: Let your kids experience messy play. Come on! Throw a shower curtain down onto the kitchen floor and give them a big bowl of cornflour goop. It cleans up easy! And if they're hesitant to get stuck in - YOU get stuck in first! Show them how fun it is, and I PROMISE you, you and your kids will LOVE IT!

Rainbow Face & Poop Hands

Make up artistry has recently become a field of interest the Lily Bug has shown some proficiency in. Since rediscovering the make up kit her big sister gave her for Christmas (it was previously tucked out of her reach, but you know how it goes when little girls have big chairs and long arms...) she has been applying make up to any thing she can pin down.

Her little brother is one of her favourite candidates for her experiments in duo-tone full-facial eyeshadow application. When she weilds the make up wand like a small baton and calls his name, Guy Smiley comes running - all big grins and dimples, crying "yay! yay! yay!" over to his place beside the mirror, as fast as his chubby legs can pedal him.

"Rainbow Face!" The Lily Bug declares his new name to be. And he loves his sparkly facial artist palette. Matches the rainbow hands he was sporting earlier in the day.

The Lily Bug loves to mix her colours until she's left with poopy brown. First she mixes the poop, and then she paints. And usually it's herself that she paints. In poop colours.

And then of course it's Daddy's turn.

The Lily Bug is very focused as she applies each brush stroke to her human canvas. And the result? A household of  zombie clowns! (Minus the Teen, who refused to take part and scowled behind a long fringe when Yours Truly tried to take a photo of her for posterity's sake. *sigh*)

Anyway, that was last week. This is the finish up of a post I began days ago and never managed to come back to.

In the past week we've gone on amazing adventures through enchanted forests, wild rugged shorelines, and lakes of boiling lava. (Or maybe, more truthfully, lakes teeming with eels and ducks and stuff.) I'll maybe do a photo recap later. Posterity and all...

I've also been busy building a couple of websites and creating graphics for people...In doing this, I've learnt I don't quite have the stamina to trudge through source code deep into the wee hours and then still function as a parent the next day, after all.

I don't know how work-from-home mums find the time to do it. Really, I don't. :/

I creep away to load up Photoshop while the kids are otherwise completely immersed in an activity, and suddenly they're jumping all over my knee. Plagued by mummy-guilt, I step away from the computer to play with them, and they don't need me any more. Can't win!


Stay tuned Smurflings, as coming up soon is my second-to-last product review. Shall it be the Pantene? Or the Olay? :)

(I know I know, you're waiting with bated breath...)

Edited to add: I came across this cute site earlier today. Love the concept - check it out!

 littlesketchers.com

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One Large Park, Dozens of Children, One Muddy Puddle.

... And of course, my two lil' munchkins had to be the only two to find that muddy puddle.

You can probably guess where I'm going with this...

Initially they did a fantastic job of staying clean and running about the playground, like the gazillion other children who were crawling and clambering over various platforms and climbing frames, while their parents enjoyed a sunny afternoon and a bit of ball game practice. (I have no idea what kind of ball game they were practicing. It involved a field, a ball, and people to kick that ball. That's about as much as I know of these things.)

Guy Smiley even surprised me by climbing right to the top of a curvy ladder thingie. And then by fearlessly whizzing down the Big Slide with a bit of unhelp from his lil' big sister (unhelp = the kind of help where the big sis seems like she's going to sit behind him on the slide and go down in a tandem, but then gives him a helpful shove instead.)

Of course, it wasn't long before conventional play became a bit dull for my Mucky Monsters so off across the field we went, in search of misadventure. On that last leg of the journey as we headed back towards the car, they found the puddle. Was there any chance they'd walk around it or at least tip-toe cautiously through it?

Well for a moment there, yes.

Against all of my expectations, the Lily Bug stopped before it, wrinkled her nose and exclaimed "eeew look, a muddly puddle... Eeew mud is gross, mum!"

I have no idea where she got that notion from, but I can assume she's been spending too much time under the influence of the nice clean tidy Kindy girls.

It was Guy Smilie who reminded the Lily Bug of all the fun there is to be had by splashing in mud, and by the time he'd bum-shuffled right through it and back again, she was jumping in with two feet and the world's biggest grin.

There seems to be a running theme to my blog, and that is the various ways in which my munchkins can cover themselves in goopy brown stuff. Fortunately, most of the time the goop is mud, but sometimes... Sometimes it's something much worse. *sigh*

Anyway, it's time to put an end to this 'coffee break'. Today the sky is a near-flawless blue, the Lad is on his way home from work (it is supposed to be his day off btw), and we're about to head off to Cheltenham beach and North Head tunnels for the afternoon. Awesome :D

I'm Melting! I'm Melting!

With the warming weather comes an increased urge to get out of the house and enjoy doing so without having to drag the kids away from every muddy puddle they want to stomp in.

Roll on Summer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for letting the kids jump in puddles, but it gets to the point where light splashing is not enough - not for them anyway. They have to find one deep enough to wade through. And that's still not enough. They've gotta get their limbs in there; scooping up handfuls of mud and dripping it from one palm to the other, smearing muck to the elbows, The Lily Bug likes to explore the texture of mud with her entire body. In particular, her hair. Give her a storm-fed puddle as a palette, and she stands on her head and transforms into a human paint brush.

She did attempt a headstand in the mud during this particular adventure, but I missed the shot as I was already halfway back to the car calling "come on before I leave you behiiiind!" along the way.

What I really really hate about this kind of fun? The part where it becomes unfun. The part where it becomes one of  those waking nightmares you can't shake off for the rest of the day. Yup. The part where mucky monsters have to get clean again.

For the highly-volatile Lily Bug, this becomes a Total. Meltdown. Nightmare. By the time we get on to the clean up, she's tuned out the world and she's in 'The Zone'. You know that tired zone that is usually a precursor to a full-scale over-tired screaming fit? It's at this point, our fun-loving three year old transforms into the Wicked Witch of the West.

There's kicking, there's screaming, there's the gnashing of teeth... Halfway through the ordeal I'm declaring "we are never EVER playing in mud again" and by the end I'm all but begging my poor devil-possessed child to stop with the screaming and clawing and thrashing because I am in fact a wee bit afraid that the neighbours will think something godawful is going on in the house, and call the cops.

At least in summer, a water fight can solve the issue of clean up time.

In summer, the messy play table can be moved outside so I don't have to spend an hour scrubbing floury watery goop off the kitchen walls. The muck is cleaner; less water-logged rugby field and more soggy sandpit.

 Roll on Summer.

This was last summer. The clampit was filled with lovely soft Pinaki sand on one side and water on the other, then mixed to create a diarrhea-brown ooze that we (or rather, they) spent every available day wallowing in. Clean up time was garden hose simple.