watercolor

My children are driving me INSANE. Anya had a 30-minute nap, which is of course totally inadequate, so she's super-cranky and won't. stop. whining. Daniel insists on wearing underwear but he keeps forgetting to use the "toh-et". It's cold and raining outside so we're kind of stuck here for the afternoon, making the constant whining all the more hard to take. I feel so cooped up and frustrated I want to cry. Or get a drink. Or maybe both, though I hope this little whine session of my own will prevent either from taking place.

Okay, enough.

The kids wanted to do some watercolor painting this morning. Want to see the results?



The one on the left is Daniel's, and the one on the right is Anya's.

Anya paints with gusto, mashing the brush down in the paint tray and then coming down equally hard on the paper. I don't let her anywhere near the cup of water for rinsing (well, I did once, but let's just say it was one-trial learning), but otherwise she does pretty well with keeping the paint on the paper and not on her clothes. She's so hard on the paints themselves that I bought a new set for Daniel; the Crayola kind is about 4 bucks at the craft store and totally worth the prevention of inevitable rivalry that would ensue if they had to share one.

Daniel is so orderly with his painting, today even more so since he was trying out the new paints and wanted to see what each color looks like - hence the easter egg blobs. He almost never draws any representational images, just paints blobs and stripes to see how the colors turn out. Daniel has always been such a careful child. He never writes on the walls or puts anything away in the wrong place. He's always been an expert at stacking blocks.

Anya is a little more typical in that she is an unintentionally destructive toddler. She's certainly not as rough or energetic as other kids I've met (and I don't mean that in a negative way), but she steps on toys, knocks things over, and if you give her a writing implement, she'll write on any surface she can find. Like I said, typical.

She's also just a year and a half old, so I don't know how much I can read into the paintings from this morning. It was all of five minutes before both kids lost interest and wanted a snack. Still, I can't help but ponder the implications of their personalities when I look at those paintings side by side.

Comments

Jessi said…
I love Anya's. It's tree-ish. It's funny the little things you pick up about your kids. I am constantly comparing how Maren eats, sleeps and everything else withe Brynna. Brynna was sitting up by now. Brynna had teeth by now. Brynna never ate this good. Brynna wasn't nearly this big. I can't wait until I can compare personality traits, because so far, I've got nothin'.
Don't hit me for suggesting this, as I'm sure you already have - but since Daniel is particular about where things go, perhaps when he messes in his pants you could suggest, "Oh, pee/poo doesn't go here, it goes in the toilet. Pee/poo belongs in the toilet." But, like I said, I'm sure you've already tried it, so all I've just accomplished is frustrating you to no end where you feel like reaching through the monitor, down the Internet connection, and out my computer monitor to whap me upside the head. :-)

As for the paintings, I think they are both lovely in their different ways. Anya's is very freeform and somewhat "tree-ish", as Jessi said; whereas Daniel's looks very pop-art-ish, like Warhol or something.
Tooz said…
Hey. It's raining up there? Do you have washable markers? You might let the kids (Daniel, in particular) draw on paper and then take it outside to see what the rain will do to it. He might get a kick out of that.

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