In her own words, the Blue-eyed Boy and Curly-Locks had 'a rough weekend'. Translation: too much TV and ice-cream.
It happens.
So what to do to help the recovery? Yesterday morning my beloved husband took them on a hike. Being in nature is always restoring. Then Curly-Locks spent the afternoon here with me, while the Blue-eyed Boy had some 'alone time' with the au pair.
First of all he bounced in, so delighted to be here he didn't know what to do with himself. Then he had to explore the old, familiar toys. What's struck me about these lately is how much mileage you get from good, wooden toys. At 5 and a half the Blue-eyed Boy will still play with the cars and planes and animals that he's been busy with since he was around 2.
After I coaxed Curly-Locks away for some brown rice and avocado (take that, ice cream!), which he devoured quite happily, he went for a nap. When he woke he wanted to paint.
"Good," I thought, "that's exactly what he needs."
Now, setting up painting for the little ones and supervising is a lot of work, as my artist son-in-law found out when he was visiting last Christmas. But thanks to him I had a suitable brush and proper watercolour paper to hand.
Before we started, I made sure that Curly-Locks was wearing a pinny. And during the process I kept a close watch on the blue paint, which stains quickly and permanently if it spills. I cut the corners off the paper, wet it and laid it carefully on the painting board. He set to work and was quickly absorbed in the process, engaging with the colours as they 'talked' to each other, and melded.
Wet on wet watercolour painting has something special about it because the colours move. You could say this is something like being in the heavenly world. At Curly-Locks's age there's no question of painting something for 'result': i.e. depicting an object, although he tries to draw when crayonning. It's simply a matter of letting the soul engage and be restored.
