Finally… Riya’s 1 Year Old Painting.

I know that it’s just over 3 and a half months late to continue the tradition we started with Kyla – where we do a painting once a year on their birthday.  (Here’s Kyla’s one and two year old masterpieces).  And surprisingly the reason is not second child syndrome (where you just don’t do as much for the second child as you did for the first).  The real reason we waited so long was because we were scared.  Yes, I said scared…  Of a tiny one year old.

For anyone who knows Ri, you might understand why…  One of her nicknames is Tarzana – not because she aptly swings through trees or shouts “AAaaaaaiiiiiaaaiiiaaaii” (actually she does shout like that), but the reason is because she is able to destroy things without much effort.  (Thinking about it I don’t remember Tarzan destroying anything, but they are similar in their one word answers and grunts).  She has managed to pull the entire locking mechanism right out of Seth’s parents cabinet without even trying.

Why was I scared?  I was afraid she would eat it, afraid she would break the canvas (which she tried to do by standing on it) and afraid that she would pull out some manoeuvre that we did not expect (which she is especially good at).  But the painting that we did at Mammas and Munchkins (a dedicated post soon to follow on the actual day) gave me hope – as she did none of those things there during the painting based craft.

So despite the fact that we were all zonked after a long Saturday (so zonked that Kyla was asleep by 5.30) we decided to use what energy we had left and tackle this potential disaster.  Especially considering that the older sister was asleep, Ri could actually really have her own time without being distracted or overtaken.

Out came the newspaper, the paints that we had purchased 4 months prior (cos we were going to do it THAT weekend) and the canvas.  Ri was dressed in old painting clothes that were so tight on her (because they were 3-6 months in size!  Oh well).

(A quick apology for the blurry pics – my camera sucks and half of these were taken with my phone which is also not the greatest…  I’ll stop promising it will be better soon, but hopefully not long from now it will be sorted.)

Because the paint had been sitting for so long it had kind of solidified, so the blue, yellow and green had a jelly like consistency.  The red was the only one that maintained the right sort of consistency and that explains the mostly red result.

Ri adored doing it!  But not so much the creative side, more the squelching between fingers and messing on her pants side.  She is very tactilely sensitive – she’s the type that takes out what’s in her mouth to feel it, then puts it back in to swallow.

As Seth was not keen to do the painting at this time I was the dedicated paint parent.  So, yes I am wearing clothes even though it doesn’t look like it from the pictures.  Even though I was clothed Riya decided it was a good opportunity to paint my arm…  Or maybe she thought I wasn’t dark enough or something…

Then the inevitable happened…  She stood up and put her foot right into a big piece (cos it was so chuncky it would classify as a piece) of paint.  For a normal child this would not be a problem, but for Ri it was the end of the world.  You see, she has this problem…  Her feet CANNOT.  EVER. touch the ground (without shoes or socks).  So having the paint go through her sock must have been cold and resembled the floor in some way…  She lost her mind, the snot was forming a bubbly river out of her nose.  Unfortunately all the pictures were blurred but I think you get the just of it…

We got her straight into the bath which made matters worse, because the too tight top had become a second skin now that it was wet…  I literally had to cut it off of her…  (There’s a lesson learnt – either they paint in their nappy or one of Seth’s old T-Shirts.)  She cried all the way through her bath and only calmed down after her, uhm, second bottle…

All that being said and done…  I am chuffed that we did it and super chuffed with the result!

Kyla 2010 and Riya 2011