It Seemed Like A Good Idea

I keep a couple of canisters of shaving cream with all of Ethan's Play-Doh and art stuff. It's good for his sensory disorder to play with different textures, and he has fun without knowing that I'm putting his senses to the test. Today, he asked to play with shaving cream. Not a problem. I knew Claire would want to play too, so I set up an extra space for her to play, slapped an apron on her and sprayed some shaving cream down. Ethan dug right in as usual. Claire looked at the shaving cream, looked at Ethan, looked at me, looked back at the shaving cream and back at me with the, "And, you expect me to do what with this?" look she likes to give me. I thought, "Hmmm..Maybe she really doesn't want to try this. Maybe I can entice her someway." Then, I thought, "AHA..I know just what to do to make this moment fun!" Can you guess what I did? Can you? Go on guess! Here's a hint.If you guessed that I added food coloring to the shaving cream, you would be correct. I thought Claire would have fun with it. I added a few drops of pink to hers and a few drops of blue to Ethan's. By few I really mean 2. Ethan dug right in. Claire just stared at me again, so I swirled hers up with my finger and then pushed her hand lightly into the shaving cream. She got what you see in the picture above. She spent the next 15 minutes staring at her hand and at me saying, "Wow...Wow...Wow!" Then waiting for me to say it back. After getting her hand in it, I rinsed my finger off, and discovered it was pink still. CRAP!! I looked back at the table, where Claire was still saying wow, but Ethan was laughing and looking a little something like this:
Whoops. I thought, "Well, I guess Ethan will be heading to school looking a little smurf like tomorrow." This was when I decided to make the most of it and grabbed my camera.
Claire was still in wow mode once I started snapping pictures. Finally though, she got into it and really went to town. She was so excited. She even helped Ethan smear some of his shaving cream around. Then, she had an idea. You see, Ethan was covering his arms, so she one upped him.
She covered her face. She actually laid down as far as her little tip toes would let her stretch across the table and got shaving cream all over her apron. It's a good thing David came home when he did. Grayson was starting to not enjoy being supervisor of this little art project. I sent Ethan into his bathroom to shower, and I took Claire into my bathroom where I stripped her and put her in the tub where she promptly dyed the water pink. It all came off of her though. All except her hands. Her hands are still pretty pink. Ethan ended up taking two showers. I had to clean his ears out because they got dyed blue on the inside.

So, what was my lesson here? DO NOT PUT FOOD COLORING IN SHAVING CREAM!!!

But, even though things were stained (including my table) and shaving cream was thrown everywhere, I didn't worry about it. They had fun. There was lots of laughing. I got some great pictures. It's a memory well worth keeping.