I paint?!

Had a lovely week vacation traveling out to BC with my Mom & Dad to visit one of my brothers, my sister-in-law, niece & nephew. Had a pretty fantastic time. Mostly relaxing & playing with the kids.

While there, my mom wanted me to make use of one of my Christmas presents & to paint something using the acrylic paints that mom & dad bought me for Christmas. So she sent my dad & me off to Gyro park to paint & well, the above is the result. First attempt at painting with acrylics (other than on the G.I. Joe's which has some similarities, but a number of differences).

Took me two sittings to finish it. The first at Gyro, the 2nd back at my brother/sis-in-law's house. During the 2nd round of painting, my two year old niece was all excited to get in on the action, too ("I paint! I paint!") . So I donated a canvas to her & they set her up with her little easel & smock & paints & she went to town creating a, well, somewhat more abstract piece... had some great brushstrokes in it & some cool technique - including the two handed, two brush painting style. & yeah, she sort of ended up painting her easel as much as she did the painting, but it was all good... lots of colour anyhow.

Had a sort of divided focus while trying to paint & watch my niece. This led to one slight catastrophe. I was painting away & watching her out of the corner of my eye & saw her rinsing her paint brushes in a little cup of water & then pulling the brushes out of the cup. No big deal I figured. Great that she's cleaning her brushes. What a good uncle I am that I've obviously passed on to her the importance of keeping her brushes clean.

Then out of the corner of my eye I see her pick up the glass & before it really dawns on me what's happening, she starts chug-a-lugging the water/paint remnants in the glass. Once I clue in I yelled, "Wah!! Put that down!! Don't drink that!!!" - The loud yelling scared my niece & she started to cry... so yeah, felt bad about that, but at least it stopped her from drinking in too many paint particles... after that we went to get her a glass of clean water & tried to explain to her that the paint water was bad - no drink - yucky....

Other random funny niece story - there's likely a few, don't hang out with me for too long or I'll start repeating all of them. My other brother had given me a south american cookbook for my birthday, so I decided to put together a feast for the family. Was going to make a Mango Sorbet for the dessert & so had gotten a package of frozen mango pieces from the grocery store. Started making the mango sorbet the night before & when I pulled the package of mango pieces out of the fridge, my niece comes running up saying:

"Me want one!! Me want!!'

"Kid you don't even know what these are. How do you know you want them?"

"Me want!! Me want!!"

"These could be cow tongues. Would you want cow tongues?"

"Me want cow tongues!"

"This could be frozen monkey brains. Would you want frozen monkey brains?"

"Me want monkey bwains"

"Sigh... you don't know what you're saying. OK, here's a piece."

My niece grabs the mango chunk I extend to her & promptly puts it to her tongue - makes a face & hands it back saying, "Me no want!!"...

Tried to warn her, but no..... stubborn oldest child syndrome (me being one of those, I know it well).