So, I read this really great blog called Make and Takes, and she’s got more crafty in her tiny little pinky than I have in my whole body. Seriously. She’s always coming up with great ideas to augment a book her kids are reading, or a lesson she really wants to bring home to them.

She’s inspiring, yo’.

Also out on the intarwebs have been several posts about breaking the rules with your parenting once in a while. Why not have dessert first on occasion? Why not get into the bathtub with your clothes on? A little bit of spontaneity and silliness goes a long way with kids, fo’ sho’.

Somewhere in my brain, these two concepts collided on Monday night. I blame the fetus.

Lately, my kids have been really into the book I Ain’t Gonna Paint No More. It’s a really adorable book about a little boy whose mom catches him using his paints all over the house. She puts them away, but he cannot be stopped. He just cannot resist painting.

My kids love this book, but are always curious as to why on earth you would want to paint yourself? Yucky! Icky!

My kids are “in the in and out the out” kids– they are not very spontaneous at all, they’re worriers, and they take some cajoling to get dirty or try something new. (I wonder where they get that from?) They only go in the in door and out the out door. And GOD HELP US ALL if we go in the out.

So, really, what else was I to do but show them why that little boy would want to paint himself.

Because it’s fun! We happened to have a little tempera paint around…

And one boy who just could not wrap his head around the concept that he should paint anywhere other than paper. So I gave him some paper. Because the point is to have fun, not torture the poor soul.

His sister lacked any sort of hang-ups about what “society thinks” about where paint should and should not go.

Funk caught on right away…

And didn’t hold back at all.

Not to be outdone by his baby sister, Noise finally came on board. Of course, he’s a boy. So the first thing he did was fill in his belly button and give himself bright, shiney, red nipples. The fascination begins early, I suppose.

Once he got going, he poured all his concentration (and not a little paint) into the project.

Funk was still having a great time, too.

She just thought it was the coolest thing ever. I think I’m going to have problems with this one, later.

But for now, this fun deserves a little “Funk’s Happy!” dance. Yes, it looks like she is performing the opening sequence to “Stayin’ Alive.” That’s pretty much what it is.

Leave no stone unturned! Leave no flesh unpainted!

“I once caught a fish THIS BIG!” Actually, this is the moment that Noise realized that once the paint dried, it felt really funny. It cracked on his skin and felt all soft.

A little Jayhawk five.

A little Planet Earth five.

The kids had an absolute blast, and we probably killed an hour painting out on the back deck. The kids made all kinds of handprints, footprints, elbowprints, and such all over large sheets of poster paper I laid out, and we’re going to take the best of those and frame them for the house, maybe with some prints of the pictures I took. When we were done, I turned the hose on them in the yard to get the worst of the paint off, and then brought them in for baths. They thought being hosed down in the yard was hilarious.

And I think we all learned something here, folks. I learned to cut loose and do something fun, messy, and impractical. The kids learned about having fun and breaking the rules, but also real lessons about color mixing and shapes. (Seriously! Yellow on one hand, blue on the other? GREEN HANDS.) Our neighbors learned what a freak I really and truly am when they saw me hosing down my technicolor kids in the yard.

And I learned that tempera paint is impossible to get out of a child’s belly button.