Handprints
Ian is suddenly fascinated with making hand-prints on the wall after he has washed his hands. I told him I didn’t want him doing that, but that I would find another way for him to make handprints. He asked if we would do paint, so I pulled out the finger paints and got them all set up.
Literally five minutes later, Ian was all done; and wandering through the house with finger-painty hands. I was not pleased. I went to all this trouble to get him set up with paints, to facilitate him with his hand-print obsession, and here he was wandering around while I was trying to nurse the baby.
So, I told him to go sit back down. I got a tray of water for him, and gave him some black paper. And suddenly he was completely absorbed in making hand-prints. He was thrilled that he could make them on paper, just like on the wall. He wanted me to take pictures, and watch him do it again. Then he spent a good amount of time dipping his paper in the water. This progressed to making “sponges” out of the paper. The whole thing ended in washing everything out in the sink.
In the end, it was a good time all around. Ian got to make handprints, Chava got to make a mess, and they both got to play with water – incidentally doing a good part of the cleaning up work while playing. Beautiful.
