Window Scribbles

I don't care who you are, or where you're from- ...wait! Did I really just start typing out the lyrics to a Backstreet Boys song? I promise I didn't mean to. As I was going to type my next line though- I started singing the tune in my head (because when I was 15 I probably saw the video on TRL 8 billion times), and rather than just deleting it and starting over with my post, I decided to instead to point it out and hopefully get the song stuck in all of your heads too. Did it work?

Okay but now what I was going to say, was that I don't care who you are or where you're from- there is nothing like getting new art supplies. And I'm not talking the crappy Rose Art kind that you buy for a few bucks cheaper (because we all know that those suck in comparison), but ya know, the bright colorful might-as-well-be-getting-a-new-car crayola kind.

And seriously, what doesn't crayola make these days?

We were browsing around at the BX the other day (basically a military kmart, in case you're not quite hip to the air force beat that we step to), and there on the end of an aisle, was a display of window crayons and markers? I didn't even think twice... straight into the basket they went.

Lately, Charlie has been coloring on everything. The walls, the floor, the toilet. How do you color on the toilet, you wonder? I don't know, why don't you ask Charlie, he seems to be a pro at it.

Magic Erasers seem to be key when it comes to cleaning colorful wax off of random household surfaces, but I don't have any, and even if I did, I find it awfully annoying to have to scrub purple swirly marks off of toy drums and play kitchen oven doors. We color on paper, kids. PAPER!

As soon as we got home, as promised to the whiny impatient children at the store, the packages flew open, the shades pulled up, and the babies turned into little artists...


The kids stood at the back window, separated by a Fisher Price Animal Zoo on the ground between them, confused as to how they were actually being allowed to smear what looked like rainbow stick lipstick all over the glass .

Eleanore jumped into it much more quickly than Charlie did, since shes not the one thats constantly sitting on a chair in time out for drawing "dinosaurs" on the door by the laundry room. After I assured him over and over again though, that it was okay, he started taking the caps off, and legally breaking the rules.


Tap, tap, tap, went his finger tip to the color. And then tap, tap, tap, went the color to the glass.

And you should have seen the way that his face lit up. Like all of his toilet scribbling dreams had come true.

Mama wasn't yelling. Crayons weren't being snatched from guilty hands. The time out chair remained empty and on the other side of the house?!


Eleanore had lined up all of the markers be on the sill, being very particular about how she went about her painting. And when I tried to take pictures of it, she made pirate sounds, followed by monster sounds, and then just gave me the look seen above.

...yarrrr?

Okay okay, I hear you. You want me out of your space. You've got a canvas to create on. Okaaay. I'm going.

Stand back, stand back!
I have no idea what it was that she was drawing, but it was big, and bright, and made her laugh. So whatever it was- it was awesome.


And once Charlie got a feel for it, he really went for it. Loopdy loops and swirly swirls, jagged lines and dots and smudges. The works.

The shadows that crept onto his face and arm, through the thick marks that he had left on the glass, were so intense- in the most perfect black and white sort of way.

Because coloring on the glass isn't something that happens every day, the kids didn't get bored of it after 5 minutes, the same way that they do with a regular ol' coloring book and crayons.

And when they were all finished, and the windows were nice and dirtied up, the kids were both extremely proud of their beautiful pieces of work, as they should have been...



Good job, babies! No other artists in the world could have painted a prettier picture than the two of you did.

Someday you'll have to show your baby sister how its done.

Aaaand, not having to bust out the magic eraser to clean it all up, definitely made it more fun for Mama. These crayons are toilet scribbles approved.