She giggles. “Shall we get the paint out?”
No way. No how. It’s impossible to paint with a four-year-old without her parents finding out. I have learned my lesson there. But I’ve been googling fun stuff to do with a small child and I have some ideas.
“Do you want to hear my idea?”
She bounces on her toes. “Yes!”
I place a finger over my mouth. “We have to be quiet. Your sister is sleeping.”
“Yes,” she whisper-shouts.
“We could make a mud kitchen.”
Her nose wrinkles. “Dad gets mad when I eat mud.”
“Okay. How about playdough?”
“Boring.”
I tap my chin. “What about painting with colored sand?”
I came up with this idea because I know how much Pearl loves to paint – the girl is an artist in the making – but I don’t want Rhett to shave my hair off in my sleep because I got his precious daughter dirty with paint again.
“We don’t have colored sand.”
I smirk. “But I do.”
She claps. “Yea!”
“Shall we check on your sister before we get our supplies?” I tag Pearl’s hand and we make our way down the hallway to the baby’s room.
I love this room. Dakota went all out decorating it. She even hired a local artist to paint a mural on the wall. Since this is Smuggler’s Hideaway, the mural is full of mermaids, smugglers, seals, and otters.
Speaking of seals and otters, there are life-sized stuffed animals of a seal and an otter on the floor. The mobile above the crib features otters, raccoons, and parrots. Rhett commissioned it since his first date with Dakota was an attempt to steal Plank, the foul-mouthed parrot.
Each town on Smuggler’s Hideaway has a live mascot. Smuggler’s Rest has Viking the otter. Rogue’s Landing has Rogue the raccoon. And Pirate’s Perch has Plank.
I tiptoe toward the crib. Mira is fast asleep on her back with her arms and legs spread out in the shape of a jellyfish. I resist the urge to kiss her cheek. I don’t want to wake her.
I shut the door to the nursery behind us before leading Pearl to my car, where my supplies are. I grab a bag full of squeeze bottles filled with colored sand and we return to the kitchen.
“We need to cover the dining room table before we begin.”
Pearl rushes off and returns with some papers.
“Perfect.”
Once the paper is spread out on the table, I set the squeeze bottles with red, pink, purple, yellow, and blue sand on the table.
“What do I do?” Pearl asks.
“You can draw whatever you want with the sand. Here. Let me show you.” I use the yellow to make a smiley face.
“I’m going to draw a princess!”
She gathers all the colors to her before starting to squirt the sand onto the paper. The princess has a purple and yellow gown and blue hair.
I play around with the red color.
