Good things come when other things are lousy.

So, just when I get all whiny about how awful my job is, something cool happened today. I'm pretty sure it's God's little way of saying "Suck it up, sister, you're here for a reason". I get it, I get it.

This morning, while attempting to remove B from every table top/high surface in the room and listening to him scream in protest (for three. hours. straight.), I forgot that Mondays are Art Days. Two very patient women from the Art Center come to camp and let the kids paint to their little hearts' content. Some of them want no part of it, but some love it. My group usually isn't too keen on the whole sitting in a chair and following directions thing, so I didn't think we'd be there long. Little did I know...

Last week, J smacked the art lady in the face within 30 seconds of sitting down. Today, she sat in a chair for eight minutes and let an assistant help her paint a picture of a rainbow. HUGE for this girl. I was sitting by D1, who loves to write and draw, and he was a little hesitant at first. I helped him paint a happy face with hair and ears....then he took off. It was like a lightbulb turned on somewhere in his little mind. He painted an elephant with two people riding on its back, a big bright rainbow, and a house under the rainbow with trees beside it. We could see him thinking about what to paint next. The coolest part was when he picked up the orange paintbrush and wrote "orange", then used the red paint to write "red". Why was this so cool, you ask? Why did the art ladies and I tear up a little at the sight of those two simple words? Because those were the two first words D1 has ever written. Ever. He writes groups of letters that resemble words all the time, but never an actual word. We didn't ask him to write those words, and we didn't spell them for him. Painting somehow stimulated a part of my sweet little guy's brain that said "Hey, we've seen these words a thousand times, let's make these wimpy teachers cry".

Needless to say, I won't forget Art Day next week.