This morning I made bath crayons with the girls.

Just typing that out makes me laugh at the ride motherhood is in its very nature.

Let’s make a big mess being creativity and make something for the bath that you, me, the floor and the table will all need to take after an hour.

It was fun, messy, and slightly chaotic. I thought it would be a great project to make together after seeing them on Pinterest (where else?), we had everything in the house, and it seemed like a pretty basic project to do with two little kidlets.

Sometimes I feel guilty as a mom that I don’t do enough with the girls. I see the lists and lists of ideas of things to do with your toddler and I start melting. I think I have four different versions of the ultimate toddler bucket list on my pinboard. They all have about hundred activities each and at first blush, it sounds too good to be true.

One activity per day and I’ll be on my way to world’s most awesome mum.

But here’s the truth: we are each our child’s best mum. You and me. We’re already awesome.

We know what our children enjoy, what keeps them occupied and learning, and how they learn best. We know their needs and most of the time, we can meet them spot on.

The bath crayons were fun. I had a moment of motherly pride when we were mixing the colours together and my three year old piped up, “And then what happens?” I smiled at her keenness, her focus on the colours and how they were blending, and then with my other arm grabbed my toddler from climbing out of the highchair. Covered in blue food coloring and little soap flakes.

I washed the table down. Twice. And showed the girls how to write in the suds. The floor needs to be washed and there’s food coloring in the crevices of the highchair.And there’s eight little fat crayons all ready for the next bath.

If you are so inclined, here’s what we did.

(inspiration from here)

food colouring (go ahead and buy the boxed set, they’ll come in super handy for all kinds of things)

1 bar of ivory soap, cut into quarters.

Place one quarter on wax paper and microwave for 45 seconds. It puffs up and really is the most interesting process to watch. Repeat this process four times.

(you could of course, totally skip this step and use soap flakes like the orginal recipes but I didn’t have any on hand and I figured this would work just as well)

Place a little bit of the soap cloud in a bowl, we found 4 drops of food coloring to be about right. Use your own color combos. Add about 1 tablespoon of hot water.

Mix away until color is blended. Using your hands, mold into a fat little crayon. You may have to add more soap cloud if it’s too wet.

Repeat process until all the soap cloud is used up.

It’s messy. It’s slightly chaotic (hello, food coloring and kidlets in the same room) but it’s fun and can be used for future fun.

You could always use purchased soap crayons for the bathtime.

Either way, you’re still awesome.