I think they drugged my baby!

Ok, this is not a post about daycare abusing my innocent child- but instead a post marvelling at what they were able to do with him.

For Mother's Day, the daycare sent home a wonderful present "from" Ben.  They do this kind of thing a lot, where the child "creates" a lovely work of art for the parent.  This particular piece was a a little canvas with a perfect handprint from my angel.  Wonderful, lovely, so special and perfect.  However, here is where things began to go downhill.  Seeing that lovely handprint (and being seduced by craft ideas on Pinterest- which will get its own post sometime in the future), I decided to try to make a Father's Day present for D.

My idea was to get D's hand and foot prints and layer the boys' ones on top.

(Those of you who can figure out where this is going to end can point and laugh now.)
 
Things worked out pretty well with getting D's.  He surely knew something was up, but he's a good sport, so he gave them to me without too much teasing.  J was pretty cooperative, too.  He got to pick his paint color and liked having the paint spread on his hand and foot.  The prints weren't perfect, but pretty darn good.

Then came B's turn.  The foot print was ok- if a little awkward to get.  Babies tend to clench their toes a lot, so the footprint came out a little odd looking.  Then, there was the hand.  Remember the perfect handprint above?  Yep, so this should be easy, right?

Along with clenching their toes, babies tend to make their hand into fists whenever you touch their palms.  So, imagine, if you will, me spreading green paint onto my baby's palm- which immediately turns into a fist.  Then, once there is paint on his hand, arm, face (in addition to making fists, babies like to put those fists in their mouths), his other hand and other arm, my hands and arms, the floor, the sink, etc., comes the time for me to press his little hand onto the paper and make the perfect handprint.  I'm sure you can guess how well this turned out.

How did they do it?  I lean toward the drug theory or the possibility that they have a hand "stand-in" whose only job is to come in and make perfect little handprints on canvasses so they can lull ambitious crafting parents into thinking they can achieve the same results.  My mom, of course, provided the voice of reason and said that they could have just waited until he was asleep.  I'm not convinced, however.  When I get another crafty urge (I have an idea for Christmas cards!), I will test it and see how it works out.

Luckily for the sake of my crafting sensibilities and present idea, my husband remained a good sport when I came back to him and asked for another hand and foot print.  Then, J was just as happy to play with paint the second time around, too.  And third, I finally remembered that the hospital had given us a hand/footprint kit that did not require anything to be spread on the baby.  Instead, you just lay it on paper and press their hand or foot onto the film and you get a black hand or foot print on the paper- no mess, no fuss.  It seems that someone besides me had perhaps found the difficulty in getting baby cooperation.

So, here is the final result.  I liked it.  :)