Pudding Paint.

I decided to go all sorts of old schoolwith my kiddos and bust out some pudding paints. {a.k.a. 3 packages of powdered vanilla pudding mixed with milk, separated into several bowls, and then colored with different food coloring.}

After my anal Easter Egg Dying Tyrade last month, I felt it important to have a therapeutic crafting evening where anything goes!



And if I had a quarter for every time Kort gasped and said "Ooops! I just got some on the wall..." OR "Sorry, I just smeared it on the floor.." I would be one VERY ashamed millionaire! Oi.

I had to keep reassuring him.

"That's okay bud!
We're just having fun.
No, really, it's okay.
That's okay too.
...annnnd, that's okay.
Just have FUN!"

And I was SO SAD to realize that I had done this to my child.

He was so concerned about
"these things"
and
"those things"
and
"that thing"
and I thought - since WHEN did I start {unwittingly} teaching my children that "things" were anything more than just, well, THINGS?!

It was a wonderful learning experience.

It also put a microscope up to my perceptions of the kind of mother that I like to think that I am, and made me reflect on how I might make those {admittedly flattering} visions of myself manifest more readily in the here and now.

{Did that even make sense? It's getting late...}

One great example was Tennyson.

He was totally stressed, holding his pudding-dipped leg up in the air lest it drop down, touch MORE pudding, and therefore become even further pudding-dipped. {Which, would like, be a total nightmare, right?}

And I thought:

I want him to experience the sensations of cool pudding on warm fingers... and love it.

I want him to be able to play in the mud,

and to fearlessly tear into his birthday cake come August 13th.

I want him to have spaghetti in his hair and happy in his heart.

I want him to tread {dare I say it?} recklessly through the tactile parts of much of the world and feel and do and be as freely as other animals feel and do and be.

Without guilt.
Without fear.
Without over-thinking every gosh darn aspect of his
over-stressed/over-planned/much too restrictive life!

And I can help him do this by letting go.

Kort used to experience life this way,
and listening to him apologize for
every minuscule smudge
made me want to slap myself silly and scream
"What have you done to him?
Where is my wiley, silly, care-free boy?"



And I've decided that I want my children to live in a home full of joy rather than eggshells.

I want them to know that they are more important than the couches, the floors, the carpet, or any other THING furnishing the place.

But the best news?

Kids are resilient.

They bounce back.
They forget.
They live in the present.

And after ten minutes of
"It's okay's!" and "Just have funs."
They were both up to their eyeballs in
hideously unnatural shades of vanilla pudding.



And man, it tasted good.



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