Painting 101

I know I just posted a few minutes ago but, I just thought about something else I could blog about (imagine that!)
It is hot here today and I am tired! It seems as though I am running out of ideas to keep the kiddos busy. We were eating lunch and I had this marvel idea! I thought we would go outside and we could teach Ava (my 16 month old) how to paint!!! My son LOVES to paint. We have about 30 paintings of his and they are all so great I don't know which ones to save so I've saved them all :) Anyway, Kole decided we needed to find a smock for Ava so, I rummaged through my drawers looking for an old tee shirt that would suffice. Sure enough, I found one! I smocked the children, loaded up the supplies and headed outdoors for painting 101 with Ava. This was going to be great! We put water in our cups and I divvied out paintbrushes to each of them,( and by the way, they each had the same amount of paintbrushes that were the same size, the same kind of paint and the same color cup with the same amount of water.) Like I said in the beginning, I was tired...I didn't want to take any chances! Anyway, the table was all set up. Ava was fascinated with the paintbrushes. I wet the paints (they were watercolors) and Kole started painting away. I proceeded in showing Ava how to paint. She was excited to see the colors on the paper. I was sitting there watching how cute she looked with this new activity thinking..."what a great idea this was, she is going to love this...this will occupy them for awhile...ahhhhh." Then, all of a sudden I look over at Ava and she was sucking on the paintbrush....yes, I said sucking. GROSS! I tried prying it out of her mouth but, she would not let go. She was not happy that I was trying to take this away from her. I tried distracting her with another brush but, It did not work. Finally, I said "Let's go play on the swingset". Well, that was all I needed to say and she smiled, dropped the brush and was ready to go. It hadn't occupied them as long as I had hoped but, Oh, well we will try again. In the end, she had made a beautiful painting. I will take a picture of it and post it tomorrow. (don't hold me to it but, I will try). Anyway, I hope to have many more painting adventures with Ava.