Yesterday…
I assisted in helping babies learn the joy of paint. The class was for ages 12-24 months old and you just have to imagine six babies lined up on a plastic tarp with six pieces of gold paper and five tubes of paint. There were brushes…sure…and a few kids actually enjoyed holding the brushes and swirling them around their paper. This is the time when personalities reveal themselves, the intricacies of human preference, the humor that makes up a person. One baby diligently painted swirls on his paper, another refused any tools and used her hands, and one baby ended up using her entire body as a canvas: she sat on top of her paper and smeared paint all over herself. This particular baby comes from a very conservative household, or so I was told by her nanny, “She’s not allowed to make a mess, not ever…I want to do more art with her at home but her parents would freak out…their house is immaculate and not very ‘baby like.’”

One little girl is not interested in the paint. She finds the roll of blue painter’s tape that I used to tape the sheets onto the canvas. She carefully affixes several pieces of tape onto her paper, creating blue curly-q’s and x’s. This child leaves the canvas spotless, ready to move on.

I am in charge of cleaning these babies up…I have a big bucket of warm soapy water and lot’s of rags. One by one each baby is dropped into the bucket, the water coming up to their chubby knees as we carefully avoid getting the diaper wet. I wipe down the multi-colored streaks of paint from their legs as their grown-up holds them diligently–eventually every baby leans over and puts their hands in the water. They splash the water around with their fingers and make bubbles pop. I encourage them to do this because it cleans their hands. One little boy lingers a long time near the water. He trails his finger through the water’s surface, making little paddling gestures with his hands, and splashes around. His mother claims he is obsessed with water: fountains, puddles, wading pools. “Your hands are sparkling!” I proclaim as I dry his fingers off again and again. The baby who has immersed herself in paint is stripped of her onesie and plopped in the tub. She bitterly complains as I scrub off the paint. The paint is everywhere: on her back, in her hair, in her elbows, on her ears. She spends the rest of the time padding around in nothing but a diaper; I notice her masterpiece drying on the rack: one single solitary piece of paper covered completely with several layers of paint. Not a trace of gold, the colors creating a beautiful muddy brown.