The kids love painting, and the back of an unused roll of wallpaper provides the perfect canvas for big artistic expressions. I thought I’d share this recent creation with you – it is the backdrop for a Welcome Home poster we made for Daddy when he was away one weekend. The kids were allocated half of the space each, and given free rein to paint a background in whatever way they choose. I put out just four colours – red, yellow, blue and green (and a little black, to be used for the centre line only).

Guess whose side is whose?!

Of course, at just three-and-a-half Joe’s brush control is still limited, but I was seriously impressed by his diligence in filling his entire space with colour, and the care he took to use each colour at least once. As the painting session progressed he managed to his delight to create orange and lime green as the colours began to merge (I managed to arrest the inevitable descent towards homogeneous brown!).

Ella on the other hand surprised me with her colour blocks. More often than not her artworks involve deliberate splashes and blending of colours. Yet here, she was dead set on creating two perfect panels of pure colour. It was fascinating to watch.

My girl is busy making sense of her six-and-a-half year old world in so many ways just now. There are endless questions about death, life, where babies come from, who she can marry (Franck at school) and who she can’t (Daddy). And so on. This painting is an extension of her mind, a reflection of the order that eventually develops from the chaos of young childhood. Slowly but surely the world starts to make sense. Innocence begins to be lost. But is replaced by a sense of control that makes anything seem possible, and the wonderful, freedom of choice that maturity brings.

I hope she never stops experimenting.