Collaborative journaling

It's when a grandmother tries to keep a toddler busy by getting our 20 fingers covered with watercolor paint. 

Kai's teachers at Musikgarten told her mother and me (and we saw for ourselves) how the little one refuses to join finger-painting time and just watches her classmates, saying, "Nood lang si Kai" (she still refers to herself in the third person). Maybe it has to do with her dining manners, too. She vehemently dislikes when her fingers get sticky with food or sauce, she panics and cries, "Tissue, tissue" or "Wash kamay."

My solution was to get her to enjoy painting. And since I don't like writing on blank pages (i.e., no images or pictures), she was my willing collaborator when I decorated a new journal. She got watercolor marks all up to her arms and didn't mind when she was assured that they would all wash off.

We start by covering her palms with orange watercolor so she can make these prints.

She makes dots and I work around them with my brush. She affirms my ability to paint by saying, "Wow! Danda!"

After awhile, the pages of an unused Corona notebook from my adult daughters' grade-school years are inaugurated with my scribbles.

The young artist's thought bubble reads: "¡Vamos, Dora! Nuestro trabajo está hecho."

Photos by Kai's Booboo Babeth