Cool Whip Paint Play

 I had no idea just how many toys I would buy within my daughters first 2 years, and I’m only half way through! It never really occurred to me when buying these toys that she would grow out of them within weeks. I never used that swing I got, she hated it.  I got super excited when she started holding her teething toys and went out and bought a ton of them. She had her favorite one or two, and the rest hardly got used. The Bumbo was useful, but only for the first few months. The walker I bought, she will probably never push again since she can run perfectly fine, that lasted about 3 weeks. Basically, there are toys for every developmental stage, and the older she gets, the more toys there will be. My living room has now become a bright play room.

I was going through Emma’s toys the other day, seeing what I could get rid of. She didn’t like this one bit. She held out her little hand to the 7 or 8 toys I had collected and looked at me like “Excuse me, those are mine”. I told her they were baby toys and she was too big for them, but I guess she had to see for herself. I handed the first toy to her, a teething ring, she looked at it and threw it on the ground, holding her hand out for the next one. We went through all the teething toys, rattles, wrist bracelets and car seat toys, with her throwing each one onto the floor. Then when there were no more toys in my hand, she walked off and went to go play with one of her “big girl” toys. Just for a laugh, I picked her up and put her in that saucer that sits in the corner and we haven’t used in months. I put her in there and my little girl acted like I just put in her jail. She tried to get and out and the started to whimper, tried to get out again and then let out her big “I’m really mad now” scream. She was only in there for about 45 seconds..

Now, that I’m mostly past that “Everything I find will go into my mouth” stage, I’m excited to try some of the sensory activities with her that we can do together. Most of these are fun dollar store activities. I found this cool whip paint play on Pinterest, and since it was fine even if she did eat it, we tried it. I did this activity when Emma was almost 11 months old. It only lasted about 5 minutes, but that was probably because I was scared she was going to get the paint everywhere, and she was mixing all the colors, that the paint turned black, and I was scared it was going to stain her skin. I loved this, and we will definitely be doing this again, with one thing different. I recommend doing this in the bathtub, it gets messy! I definitely didn’t like cleaning black, blue, and pink paint off my couch and floor!

Here’s what you need:

Lite Cool Whip (just in case they eat some), Food Coloring, Muffin Pan

We did this in the living room and I just laid a towel down to catch any mess. I gave her a spoon, the cutest little girls 1^st spatula and a silicone basting brush. I highly recommend doing this in the bathtub. 

Trust me, it gets messy! 

And here is where we ended.; when the paint started to turn black, and she decided to eat it.

There is another variation I have heard of before for older kids. It uses shaving cream instead of whip cream. But whatever you use, I hope you had fun with you kids, I know I did!