The artist in you..

I think everyone has a little artistic talent in them. And I think that of everyone children have the most creative talents ever! This week I have realized that my kids top everyone. It seems like every day I'm finding new mediums for art with pictures for me.  The most recent of these was the bathroom toilet!

A couple months ago after finding marker on the wall that would not scrub off I got fed up and found every marker, highlighter, pencil, pen, and crayon in every hiding spot they could be and put them up high and OFF LIMITS!!  Much to my kids dislike and their ranting and raving they have stayed up high. Or so I thought...

 Todays artwork was sponsored by a yellow highlighter, crayola, and a skin marker (that I really don't know where it came from.)  Beautiful work really...

I have to say I was proud of myself for not losing control. I had my visiting teacher here at the time, and for fear of her reaction if I pulled my adorable two year old out and swatted her I instead sternly told her that was a "no no" and sent her on her way for the moment. We would get down to the real consequence after our company left.

 Poor lady had to cover her face and was turning red from trying so hard not to laugh. Needless to say that B's reaction to getting swatted later was more funny than the toilet I should have just done it with company here! B just looked at me with a scuzzy look and gave me a grumpy noise. HAHA I haven't ever gotten such an evil eye that it made me laugh and the whole discipline thing went out the window!

Boo on the other did his typical ignore me, scream at me, and walk away. We're still working on discipline methods for him. He did have to help clean up though!

So now how to clean it up. They have to learn to clean up the messes they make whether it's a good mess or a bad one right? My next fear is marker on the toilet. Should come off easy? Probably would have, but why take the chance of just smearing the stain.  I forgot to mention that they did get some on the floor, wall and tub too!

Not to get sidetracked here but Pinterest is my new best friend, I get so many ideas off of that site that my head spins. So what did I do? I grabbed the laptop and started looking for ideas to clean this off. I've noticed lately the surplus of cleaning ideas, and homemade cleaning agents. I found a pin a few days ago about using shaving cream for cleaning.

Shaving cream? Really? Then the light bulb came on.  Shaving cream is a great sensory medium!! I just got the opportunity of the day to teach my kids and get some input!

Still afraid of smearing the marker and making a bigger stain I tried a little on the tub first. WORKED LIKE MAGIC!! It wiped right off! Like I said before it probably would have wiped right off anyways with a little water and a rag, but we're in a rental and I was taking no chances.


Next we moved on to taking turns cleaning up the mess. Spray some shaving cream all over the toilet and give them a rag and its off we go!  It did smear a little but we just rinsed out the rag and did it again.

The only problem we encountered was the plastic toilet seat.. it does stain. But lucky for me I have magic in my cupboards and got out the magic eraser. Magic eraser and shaving cream are the miracle cleaner.  Now I have a nice clean toilet, marker free and smells great. And in the bargain some sensory input for Boo because he got shaving cream everywhere and it smells great too!

Now to just get them to stop drawing on everything but the paper.... See ya next week!

Welcome Back!

Wow!! I didn't realize it's been almost a year since I posted anything. Well in my defense it's been a busy, long, up and down year. Since I don't have room or time to fill you in on everything, I'll give you the short version. Basically after finding out that our then 3 year old son possibly had a ASD (autism spectrum disorder) our life went into a spiral. Not necessarily downward but definately spinning in some direction.

We did find out that our precious little boy has PDD-NOS and SPD. Which basically means that he has an extremely high functioning ASD and has a hard time processing sensory input to his body. Little things bug the crap out of him and big ones sometimes don't make a difference. 


So now my days are filled with running errands, therapy appointments, running kids to two different schools AND finding new activities and "sensory" tools.  This week we ventured into gardening, I went to walmart and spent about $5. We bought Clay pots and flower seeds. Luckily I have a box full of acrylic paint and so we settled down to an afternoon of finger painting and planting.

I gave the kids free rein on how they wanted to paint their flower pots. My only rule was that I got to put the paint on the napkin so we didn't end up with a whole bottle on the table!

As you can see he would only get a few fingers in at a time! Oh well, at least we were getting messy!

 So after we let the pots dry we moved onto filling them with dirt. With our hands of course! No shovels or gloves for this sensory kid!

They planted their seeds and now we're waiting patiently (or as patient as we can!) for sprouts! I'll post pics once we actually have blooms.

I know that there are lots of blogs out there and bunches more with lots of sensory ideas. And just plain fun ideas for kids. My goal in this blog is to help myself by giving me somewhere to put everything down, to help inform our friends and family, and to hopefully help at least one other stressed out "sensory mom!"

Good luck in your adventures!