Crayons

We spent a surprisingly harmonious evening with the kids last night. The girls are at the point where they can spend hours coloring or painting. They love art projects, and actually sit together quietly engrossed in their work, unless they are interrupted. And, unfortunately, that happens a lot in our house.

The girls have had to learn how to manage their art supplies and manuever around so that the babies don't grab the markers or crayons. The babies both have one goal in common: capture and eat any and all writing utensils they find. They comb the house first thing in the morning looking for forgotten crayons so that they can bite the sharp ends off and enjoy a little snack before breakfast. The worst is when the get ahold of a marker without the cap, or actually even with the cap, since they've learned how to take the lids off. They love to suck on the marker, so that their mouths become saturated with color. I can't tell you how much I freaked out when G came around the corner into the kitchen one day with a dark blue mouth. Gross.

Anyway, I was impressed with how well the girls were doing with the art projects, and yes, that includes little G. You'll notice I didn't mention how well J.D. was doing with the art, scroll down to see what happened.

Here is our budding artist, adding a pink princess to her landscape.

Cubby is working hard on writing her name. You go overachiever!

Even little G got in on the action, and didn't eat one crayon! She actually did some coloring! I had to hold the paper down so she wouldn't color on the table, but hey, it's a start!

G's masterpiece. She is very advanced for her age.

Here are my three girls. All working together, quietly sharing, not eating the crayons. This is a moment of parental bliss for me.

Uh oh. J.D. showed up, and two of the girls clear the scene. My oldest braves it out alone.

He quickly grabs the orange. See how he's holding it? Classic pickpocket style.

He saw me looking at him, so he pretends to look for paper.

"I wasn't going to eat it mom, jeez, can I just have some paper?!"

And then, quick as a flash, J.D. goes for it. He's caught in a double whammy: eating a crayon and tearing up Cubby's artwork. She takes care of business and avoids being bitten. Good job. I don't get involved, I figure I need visual records of the altercation.

As usual, J.D. finds solace with good old dad. The girls return to their art, and our home is peaceful again.....for about 3.5 minutes.