Sunday, February 25, 2007

Budding Artist

This post needs a little background. Our son is 2 and a 1/4 yrs old. He still takes a nap each afternoon from 2-3 hours. We have found recently the longer the nap the longer it takes him to get to sleep at night. He and his sister sleep in the same room. She goes right to sleep. She no longer naps. She does not allow the door to be closed and I think this keeps him up. It didn't used to bother him to have the door closed when we had an extra bedroom. So usually she goes to sleep and he plays around in his room with cars or something and eventually goes to sleep. He will sometimes come out and get taken back to bed 2-3 times but it hasn't been a big issue.
So.........tonight we hear the little whispers of conversation with himself and we tell him from the living room to be quiet and go to bed. We figure he is up to his harmless play and will eventually fall asleep. Well, eventually he pops his head out of the room and in the faded light I can tell something is not quite right. I ask him to come a little closer for inspection. This is what I find. I am guessing this is is his self portrait (literally).
So we go to the bathroom and wash up and find he had already been working on that project with red hue soap all over the bathroom. He also had done some nice free hand work on the bathroom door. I got his hands clean and the door cleaned while giving the lecture (probably for the 100th time) about how we only write on paper. Then it is back to the bed where I find his masterpiece on the popular pillowcase medium. He may be the next Christo.

This time we click a few pictures, try not to giggle, while continuing the stern lecture about it is not ok to write on things other then paper. The door was closed and a budding artists creativity was stifled for another day.
The plan is to skip the nap, endure the late afternoon whining and put him to bed early without late night adventures in his art studio.
P.S. And yes there are worse things for toddlers to paint/draw with than markers that wipe clean with soap and water.

5 comments:

Dim and Jana said...

Yikes! What fun to clean up... and why do they think of these things?
RR is also having the trouble with going to sleep at night when he has a nap--I'm not willing to give up naps though!!!

Left Coast Sister said...

THat's great! I'm so glad you are concerned about not stifilng his artistic bent... I'll keep the pens out of reach in March!

jay are said...

ah, da little picasso.

Gina said...

Oh the things we have to look forward to.

Didge said...

I had to chuckle when I read this, I think I know what you are referring to when you said there are worse things than pens...was that Siena? I loved the drawing on the pillow case and can just picture the look on his face when you came to check it all out. Those look like Bend pj's. miss ya