O Wise One

Little miss Haana is very fond of arts and crafts. She uses her creativity to come up with new craft ideas; she dreams up, then builds, sticks, decorates, glues and paints.

For her paintings, little miss Haana has been borrowing my acrylic paints. They are very good quality artist grade paints. I got her a pack of her own brushes and set of small canvases. Recently, she decided to paint on a long canvas she found had been hiding in the upstairs closet for a while. It was 12x36 inches. I warned her, it will take a long time for her to paint it all, and she may lose interest mid way. She insisted she wanted to paint it. I relented.

It took her a couple weeks to finish her painting, but she did! She made 2 tall trees, on green green grass, with a little girl smiling, and a little boy climbing. The painting came out wonderful, and I am so proud of her! I put the painting up on the wall.

However, a week or so later, her table-top easle, the paints, the brushes, the palette, the water cup, all the things she set up for her painting, were still out there, waiting to be wrapped up and put away. And not for the want of being reminded.

I finally lost it one day. And i told her all her brushes are ruined, I'll not buy her new ones, and unless she learns to take care of her art things, she doesn't deserve to have them. This led to her crying, saying, "You never support me..". I got mad-der. I told her I let her have my paints which were so expensive. She made some snarky remark at that. Which made me angrier still. And then more crying. I lectured for a little bit more, before both of us got silent into our own bubbles, both unhappy.

What I didn't expect is, little miss Haana came around after about 5 mintues till both of us had cooled off. She first coolly circled around the area where i was. I didn't react. Then she came back, took me by my hand and took me to the couch, and said "Mumma, I love you.  But when you keep on scolding me it makes me really upset". I didn't really expect her to be so wise as to come around and talk to me like that! I had already melted in my heart when she took me by my hand.  I hugged her, and said "I love you sweet baby. But when you don't listen to me or retort at what I'm saying it just gets me angry. Can you just say -ok mumma, next time?". She said fine. More hugs and kisses and we were all made up. Meanwhile i was wondering how wise she proved herself out to be!

Little Miss Haana's Tall Trees Painting

Screw Up

This is like a poster of what not to do.

Yesterday little Miss Haana and I were painting another batch of sun-catchers. I decided to touch up one tiny portion by myself, so I took her paintbrush from her.

But just as I rolled the brush in the paint and was about to do some touch up, a drop of paint plopped down on the sun-catcher. "Oh no", I said, "Look Gugu sometimes Mumma screws up too.." And I became absorbed in painting.

I realized quick enough I'd made a mistake - and not just with the paints; because very soon little Miss Haana asked me, "Mumma, can I screws-up too? Pleeaase? Please Mumma, can I scrooze up too?!". (Yes she does talk like that most of the time!)

:-) why was I not told this was gonna be tricky?

Joke

We were partaking in our weekly Sunday night ritual of changing nail paint - little Haana and I. The little girl chooses the color she wants this week for herself and for Mumma. 

Today I was painting her toe nails and told her like always "No moving". And after sometime I followed that with "No talking either" so that she doesn't move her legs and spoil the nail paint. Neither of which she pays heed to usually.

After a precious couple seconds of silence Miss Haana leaned over to me and said "Hey Mumma, why don't you tell me a joke".

I stopped what u was doing and looked up to make sure I'm still dealing with a two and a half year old!