Last week, Abby said, "Hey Mom! Can we please make Valentine's Day cards for everybody? I think it will be a really easy and clean project and we'll both have fun and nobody will cry!" She couldn't wait. We decided to make cards along these lines for the grandparents and her great grandmothers. Cute!
I stripped Abby down to her diaper and cleared off space on the kitchen table. I grabbed some paper, non-toxic face paint, and our almost naked baby. Abby sat in her high chair as I smeared paint on the bottom of her left foot. "Wow Mom, I would love for you to paint the bottom of my foot and I promise that I'll hold completely still!"
I moved my hand from her foot and turned my attention toward the table and I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. As any other baby would be doing, Abby was grabbing her freshly painted foot and was working on getting it in to her mouth. "Gee Mom, thanks for buying non-toxic paint...I'm sure it tastes just as delicious as the toxic stuff, but I better test it to make sure!" My cat-like mom reflexes switched on and I swooped in and intercepted the tiny but powerful foot.
Somewhere around now I realized that I was going to need to work fast. "Don't be silly Mom...I'm going to make this really easy for you!"
I held Abby in position above the table and began to try to move her red foot towards the paper. It wasn't working. There was paint on the high chair, the high chair seat belt, and my shirt, but not on the paper yet. I repositioned her (somewhat like juggling jello) and found victory. One smeared footprint done! "Oh gosh Mom, that was fun! Let's do that several more times please!!" I admired our handiwork; most of her toes were present on the print so I counted it a victory and did three more left feet.
I worked quickly to get her right food painted. As I was finishing up, Jared walked in the door for his lunch break. This elicited quite the excited response from Abby. I said hi to Jared and looked back at my bright red child. "Oops Mom, I accidentally just lost control of all of my limbs...sorry for getting paint on every square inch of my body!" Suddenly our sweet Abby seemed less like a baby and more like an octopus and I couldn't control any of her legs.
She wiggled and squirmed in her excitement to see Dad and she basically single handedly (double footedly?) repainted the kitchen. "What Mom? You wanted that part of the table to be red? And that Mason jar? And the rest of your shirt? And Milo? Got it!" I attempted to wrangle Miss Octopus legs and after quite the struggle still hadn't stamped a single right foot print.
And then I did. But it didn't look like a foot. "Mom, I would love for you to try that again!" Sure, Abs!
Jared had to stand out of her line of vision so that Little Miss Octopus could chill out. The next footprints were not footprints, but more like angry red smeared blobs. "Please make extra sets of footprints Mom, please!" Abby begged. Not one to disappoint, we made a few extra sets that looked less like an animal had been butchered and more like feet.
Finishing up, four out of six footprint hearts had at least 7 out of 10 toes represented and basically looked like feet. Success!
"Hey Mom, please give me a bath even though it's not bedtime. I promise not to repeatedly kick you and my changing table and get red paint all over everything...I would never do that!"
P.S. I admire any preschool teacher that does this with multiple children. You should be paid more to teach and make crafts with an entire class of octopus babies for an entire year.
