Fun with Daddy and Fingerpainting

Last weekend, I went and stayed with my Mom on Friday so my Dad could go out of town and get some Continuing Ed and a little vacation.  We decided it would be easier if Clay and Gavin stayed at home so that we didn't have to drive two cars and so we didn't have to choose between spending $50 to board Doug or taking him with us to a house already overcrowded with dogs.  I know we could have asked someone to watch him, but truthfully we had both failed to even consider the situation until late Thursday night, poor Doug has obviously moved WAY down the priority list.  So even though I was sad to leave them behind I was secretly a little excited to have some peace and quiet and get some serious reading done.....

I don't think they got into much trouble on Friday night since there isn't much time between when Gavin gets home from school and bedtime.  But Saturday Gavin got all dressed up in his camo, thanks Nanny-ma, and the guy time began.  They did lots of playing inside and tearing stuff up, racing each other around the house pushing Gavin's lawnmower and tricycle, played kickball at the park with some other kids, harassed the animals, and various other things boys love to do.  Somewhere in between all the madness my wonderful husband found time to clean the house, another good reason for me to go to T-ville alone :-).

Gavin feeding Mommy's socks to Doug

You like our "knee-high" childproof cabinet, don't you!  For some reason he can figure out the ones we paid money for, but the random, weird things we used in a pinch, he doesn't seem to mess with.  Go figure.....

 Kind of blurry, but what a precious face!

I came home Saturday afternoon and took over parenting so Clay could go hunting and have a little peace and quiet himself.

Sunday afternoon, we had pretty much done everything we could do to entertain Gavin both indoors and outdoors and were getting a bit desperate when I remembered an article or post I had saved about homemade fingerpainting.  All you needed was flour, food coloring, and wax paper and lo and behold we had all the ingredients for once!  I assumed that it would be permanent since we were using food coloring, but I didn't care at this point.  I did care enough though to make Gavin take all his clothes off, I made the mistake of teasing him about being a naked baby, even though he still had his diaper and shoes on.  Well he assumed that meant he needed to be a completely naked baby and he proceeded to pull his diaper off.  It was too funny not to take a couple of pictures off since he really reminded me of that song about The Streak.  If naked baby bottoms offend you, scroll past hurriedly.

 Poor Josh, trying to escape and Gavin trying to catch him

Just feeling the freedom, swinging his arms around

So after I wrangled him back into a diaper, we got started and the painting of everything except the wax paper began. I tried to coax him into painting on the paper by painting myself but all it seemed to do was just get me messy.  He prefered to pour the paint onto the paper and then slap it around and splatter it everywhere.  Clay was not impressed but I figured it kept him occupied so it was a worthwhile activity.

As you can see, he has already "tasted" it.  Good thing is is nothing but flour, water, and food coloring.

Uh-oh, did I just pour it on the floor??  Oh yes, yes you did.

More, more, more!!!

He had some left over peanut butter toast from lunch that I thought we could use kind of like sponge painting, trying to work on my creative side.  Silly Mommy didn't think about the fact that he would probably just dip it in the paint and then eat it.

Mmmmmm, yummy!

A colorful, happy little boy!  I was wondering what everyone at school was going to say on Monday....

Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the food coloring sticks to the flour and not to the body, so after some scrubbing to get the (flour + water = glue) off he looked just like a normal boy and not a green version of a smurf.  It didn't stain anything else either, so I would recommend the project to anyone who doesn't mind a non-permanent mess and a few (many) extra carbohydrates consumed by their child :-).