How You Know You're a Parent

Wonder Daddy and I were lying on the hide-a-bed, testing to see if friends coming to stay tonight would be comfortable.

Staring up at the ceiling, Wonder Daddy snorts.

"THAT would be a bad idea."

"What would?"

"I was going to say (scrunching his hand towards me) 'I'm gonna get your belly!'"

"Huh. Yeah. Don't do that."

Happy Sunday everyone!

How to Make Plastic Dolls Wonderfully Modest

File this under "another messy project that didn't make a mess."

Ernie pulled out her princess dolls yesterday, and I remembered that Miss Ariel had a shocking lack of upper-swimsuit. Time for Mama's Big Box of Paint!

Ernie picked a color, and I painted a top on our under-dressed heroine. Ernie wanted shorts on her, too, because every one knows that we ALWAYS wear shorts with swimsuits. So now, our tiniest mermaid has a full-on unitard!

After I finished painting, I started spreading the leftover paint around the paper plate I use to hold my colors, and Ernie wanted to finish for me. Then she wanted another color. Then another. Before I realized it, my four-year-old was painting with a REAL brush, using REAL acrylic paints...and you know what, nothing bad happened!

After the plate was full, she moved on to painting a page from her watercolor painting book, and that DID get a little messy, but only because she wanted to paint to the very bottom edge of the paper and ended up sticking her wrist to the paint 10 or 15 times. But acrylic washes up with water when it's wet, Ernie had a blast, and I had 15 minutes to get dinner started. (Recipe to follow- I can't believe I haven't shared this with you guys!)

Cheap, Easy, Edible Fingerpaints

Another project with colors, but MUCH goopier than last time!

I found the idea at Making Do With the Not So New. Throw some flour in a bowl, add a bit of water and food dye, and go to town! We made this in the morning, and Ernie came back to it three or four times. It was totally fun to touch, and we painted on cookie sheets so it was easy to wash up. Each bowl had a 1/4 cup of flour, and two "shhhhhhhhps" of water :) She made pictures, and practiced mixing colors together to make new shades.

It was fun to work with, and as the day progressed the gluten kept developing...and developing...

By the end of the day, it was a total gloppy mess...and SO much fun. We didn't clean up until each bowl had been emptied onto her tray! Total sensory BLISS!

A note about clean up: this stuff was so snotty, I just scraped it into the trash can. It's possible it wouldn't have gummed up my pipes...but then again, it's possible it might have! That said, this was a breeze to clean up. It didn't stain her fingers, or our wash cloths even.