Water Works

Every day, it seems to take more and more effort to keep Matthew occupied and out of trouble. Yesterday, we painted with watercolors. Cameron was quite serious about his work, carefully choosing his colors and explaining each of his paintings. "This is a robot. And this? This is another kind of robot." Matthew, meanwhile, was figuring out the process -- Wait. Is it dip the brush in the water and THEN the paint or dip in the paint and THEN the water? They were both having fun, though, and I was congratulating myself on coming up with a rainy day activity for a 1 year old and a 5 year old.

I walked out of the room for a moment to grab some paper towels and heard Cameron say, "Yuck Matthew! Mooommmyyy! Look what Matthew's doing!" As an experienced parent, I have learned that this is inevitably indicative of trouble. Sure enough, I found Matthew holding the cup of murky purple paint water. His eyebrows were raised in confusion. Can't quite put my finger on it. Not grape juice. Hmmm. Fruit punch? No . . . He looked up at me seriously and commented, "Yucky." You heard it here first, folks: Paint water is yucky. Don't drink it. Trust me.

Matthew has taken quite an interest in water -- not just paint water -- and will drag a stool or chair over to the sink or the fridge dispenser and create quite a mess if I'm not quick enough. "Funny!" he chortles, although I beg to differ.

In the afternoon, he asked for a glass of water and, via a sophisticated communication system of pointing and frantic screeches, indicated that he wanted a big boy cup, not a baby cup with a lid. I gave it to him and, with immense pride, he took a drink. He toddled out to the play room and placed the cup on a bench, where he would return every few minutes to proudly slurp his water.

Eventually, he decided that this water could be useful for other things like pouring! He took a stacking cup off a shelf and began pouring his water from one cup to the other and back again. Cameron ran to the kitchen, grabbed a dish towel and placed it under the cups. "Matthew," he said gently but firmly. "When you do a water work, you always need to put a towel under it." Montessori in action, folks.