or the porch orange as the case may be.

My girls are generally pretty self-sufficient.  It’s really out of necessity.  Since I work from home, they are left to their own devices, probably more often than they should be.  (And yes, I struggle with that guilt.  a lot.  Weekly I consider if they wouldn’t be better off in a structured day-care program, but then, that would really defeat the purpose of me staying home with them, wouldn’t it?)  Anyway, they generally do pretty well – the house is usually trashed by the end of the day, but in the grand scheme of things, I think that’s pretty minor.  Sometimes, though, things happen that remind me that Gracie and Abigail are still little girls that need more supervision than I give them.

Yesterday morning, I had a few conference calls and a meeting. A babysitter came and stayed with the girls for a few hours.  My plan was to be done with work for the day by the time their sitter left.  Well, that didn’t happen.  I still had a few things to wrap up.  So, after the girls & I had lunch on the back porch, I went back in my office to order some DVD cases for portrait sessions.  The girls were in the living room watching TV.  Then, I saw them go by with paint brushes and paper.  I told them if they wanted to paint, they needed to go out on the front porch.  I heard them opening the door and then the sounds of giggles while they created their artwork.  After a few minutes, I went to check on them.  Here’s what the porch looked like:

The living room floor looked almost as bad on a smaller scale.  Apparently, when I saw them walking by with brushes, that was their second round of painting.  And their bodies were even worse.  They were both covered in orange paint.  They wanted to take a bath.  I told them they were too messy to come in the house.  So, I did what mothers have done ever since there has been running water and filthy children:

This was after about 20 minutes of being in the sprinkler.  See how orange Abigail’s hair is?  At least she coordinates with her tie-dye shirt!

I wanted to be upset with them.  Really, I wanted to lecture them about responsibility and creating more work for me and blah, blah, blah.  But I couldn’t.  Mostly, because if I had been doing what I was supposed to be doing (namely, supervising them) they wouldn’t have created such a mess.  But the real reason I couldn’t be upset with them was because my heart melted when I saw this:

Their two little handprints, side by side.  I love these girls of mine even when they’re painting the porch orange!