finger painting

Last week, Jed and I decided to try our hand at finger-painting.  I dumped some corn starch in a pot, whisked in some water, and set it on the stove.  After about a minute on medium heat, the corn starch and water changed from being the consistency of whole milk to gloop.  It was very cool to watch.

I scooped a couple tablespoons of the gloop into 4 plastic baby food containers, added food colouring, and voila!  Finger paint - edible and safe to give to a 7mo who puts everything in his mouth.

While the paint cooled, I set up Jed's high chair and taped a piece of paper to the tray.  I then went to get Jed, who had pulled all the board books off the shelf and was quite happy with himself (to be fair, I had set him next to the shelf on purpose, knowing that pulling the books down would entertain him long enough for me to make the paint and was better than other trouble he might get himself into instead):

I stripped him down and set him in his high chair.

He didn't know what was going on, but was pretty excited about it nonetheless:

I gave him one colour at a time.

Whoa, WHAT is THIS???

He didn't really know what to do with the paint at first, but quickly figured out that it was fun to smear it.

His favourite part, though, was when the paper got soggy enough for him to easily pull it off the tray and rip it into pieces.  I had planned on taking his "artwork", labeling it "Daddy", and hanging it on the fridge for Scott to see when he got home.  But that didn't work out so well.

The next day we invited a friend and her mom over to paint some more, and luckily for Daddy, this time Jed's masterpiece stayed mostly intact:

Sure, the painting was cool.  Getting messy was even better.
But let's be honest, what could possibly beat EATING the paint???

I asked Jed this question, and he couldn't think of a single thing!