What a mess!

At some point in every girl's life, there's a time when cute clothes simply won't do. No, at some point every young girl must reach deep into the hand-me-down Goodwill pile, pull out clothes that kind of fit and adorn herself in them. Even if they don't match.

And so, wearing a red T-shirt and shabby pink pants, Kalina headed outside with Mommy yesterday afternoon for an activity Mommy assured her would be lots of fun: painting.

Having bought the (washable, the box assures me) finger paint a good month ago, it took sunny warm weather to empower me to open the stuff. After all, there's no predicting where Kalina's sticky hands will go next, and I'd much rather nature endure the palm-prints than my house or my cats.

Following a toddler art book's wise guidelines, I'd gathered a bunch of objects for Kalina to paint and print with, from a ball of tinfoil to an empty spool to some pieces of rubbery drawer liner. I also had: 4 colors of finger paint, a stack of pre-torn paper towels, a lidded tupperware with soapy water (just in case), two tupperware lids to use as paint trays, a giant piece of paper and a cookie sheet to carry it all. Kalina made sure to bring her bucket full of flower petals, a pink shovel and a small pink watering can. We headed out to a flat, shady part of the driveway, and I kicked all the dried worms out of our way.

Kalina happily sat down while I spread our painting project in front of us. Which color did she want first? Blue, of course. She readily and without too much suggestion from me picked up the spool, dabbed it in the blue paint, and stroked it onto the paper. Then she did it again. I was delighted!

And she was done. Would she like to try the cool rubber pastry brush that even I could play with for hours? No. Would she like to use a Q-Tip? Absolutely not. How about a stick? Pine needles? The rubber drawer liner? The tinfoil? None of it. She went off to play with her bucket and flowers.

And then came the moment of Mommy truth. Is art about the process or the finished product? What if the finished product would only look like the merest chicken scratches when hung on the fridge? What if the process needs to take at least as long as the preparation did in order to make the whole thing worthwhile? What if Kalina didn't know how much fun she was missing?

And so, "How about another color?" I bribed. We squirted out purple and green, and then added orange, and soon found that the rubber drawer liner pieces would be acceptable to paint with. Mommy felt better, even though Kalina soon wandered off to find her smooth rock.

Next, I resorted to the oldest trick in the book: I started to clean up, figuring it was a win-win situation. Kalina shortly showed more interest than ever, and tried the pine needles, Q-Tips and sticks before we were both satisfied and actually ready to be done.

I'll note here that my worries about mess-making came true. Within 30 seconds of beginning Kalina had splotches of blue paint on her hands, pants, shirt and the bottoms of her shoes. Mother Nature dealt much better with these than Kalina's real mommy would've.

Another note: finger paint is inappropriately named, at least according to my toddler, who would much rather have me clean her hands with paper towels every 2 minutes than actually smear the paint on the paper with her fingers. I should probably count my blessings.

And then, since we were already in messy clothes and good moods, and Mommy's been raking it in with her freelancing lately, we decided it'd be a great idea to head to McDonald's for Kalina's first ice-cream cone, which she dug into with even more gusto than she did with blue paint and a spool. She amazed me with her skills in keeping the mess isolated on the lower part of her face, and in figuring out that the cone, while edible, doesn't really compare to the ice cream.

Photo: Kalina's masterpiece after a day of drying (some of the paint was rather globby). Thanks, Aunt Laura, for the book that inspired it all!