Messy is Best, I Guess

I'm finding that the things that are best for my kids to do all require a huge amount of clean up on my part. These things include playing outside, especially in the dirt and mud, cooking and working with food in the kitchen, and doing artwork. You have to agree that all three of those activities yield happy creative kids and also a big mess to clean up. As I'm typing this I'm realizing that one of my biggest faults in motherhood is not following up and having the kids help me with the clean up part. Sometimes it just seems easier to do it myself. Okay, I now pledge that I'm going to make them help me clean up from now on. Anyway.

Due to being ill and pregnant I have not been very valiant in getting the kids out of the house the past few weeks and they're starting to go nuts. I've been trying to supplement with a little artwork, but I have to say that those crappy little plastic cases of watercolor paints really bite. They're horrible. Stomper has been begging to use my watercolors - something I haven't done myself for months. Today I relented. We pulled out some old sheets of big paper I had tucked away and I let them loose on my paints. I cringed a bit as the paints got a little abused, but the kids had a ball. I then switched them to some old pastels I had in the back of the art drawer. The result?

Fun art and kids in the tub: