Glitter and paint

Having missed my workout two days in a row, I did a combined strength and cardio this morning... playing shoot 'em up with my toddler and deflecting excited puppies at the same time!  Have you tried stretching with a puppy on your lap/tummy?  It adds a bit of an ab workout with the laughter :-D


I love that I can do some exercise in my own home and play with my son at the same time.  My cardio today was to run on the spot as fast as I could for 60 seconds then walk/march for 60 seconds.  The Little Big Fella did some on-the-spot running with me then took off down the hall... so I chased him as fast as I could (making him squeal with delight), shot him then raced back and kept my speedy running going.  In my "break" minutes I'd shoot and tickle him.  Talk about multi-tasking :-D


This afternoon the Big Fella was sleeping after working all night and the Little Big Fella decided he wanted to create.  He found my hot glue gun in a craft tub and brought it out saying it's a "glitter glue".  Eventually I realised that he must have done some gluing and glittering with SuperCarer so I agreed we could do some (inwardly cringing at the potential clean up required).


Craft with little kids is messy!  But it's also really cool!  They don't have any rules (other than don't throw the glitter all over the house and so on) so they do whatever they want and my boy surprises me every time we do crafts.

Firstly, his control of the hot glue gun was a surprise!  He knew what he was doing and that it was hot and therefore a little dangerous.

And his choice of colours surprised me too!  He balanced out the colours really nicely (well, it appealed to me anyway).


And  he'd put glue over glitter that was already on the page, or over another glue/glitter spot, which made the picture even more interesting.

Of course, there was leftover glitter that didn't quite make it into the tubes again so he had to "fingerpaint" in that!


He wasn't quite ready to give up the crafty bug yet so he requested paint.  Inwardly I sighed, then went and got them (and the messy mat).


Again he surprised me!  He's really good at stamping (I think he might have had a fair bit of practice at that).  But he also layered his pictures by stamping, painting with the stencil brush and using his fingers (yep, rolled my eyes at that one).

Eventually he'd had enough (or I had and encouraged him to finish up) and I sent him to the bathroom to clean up.  Cleaning up the bathroom after he'd been in there was the biggest clean up task of the day!!!  He'd splashed water everywhere, put a ton of liquid soap and sorbolene cream (moisturiser) in the sink, and discovered the water spray bottle in the cupboard so sprayed the whole room!


Off came the clothes and he went outside with the water sprayer to water the plants while I cleaned up.


Did he water the plants?  Of course not!  He sprayed my shoes that were on the top step because "they had glitter on them".


And you know why I let him make such a mess?  Because he loves it!  And, after all, it's just mess!