Coloring Inside the Lines, but Outside the Box

Lainey asked me to color with her last night, a request I was more than happy to oblige! We picked our pages--a squirrel with an acorn for her and horse dressed in a tutu for me. I immediately set in coloring the tutu pink and the horse brown. Lainey was coloring her squirrel with as many different colors as she could fit in the space.

I was really enjoying this quiet time with her, and, to be honest, having a lot of fun coloring! Then I noticed her eyes darting between my sheet and her own and saw a downturned smile form on her face. Lainey gets upset pretty easily when she can't do something or thinks she hasn't done something well enough. (Where, oh where, does she get this? Must take after her Uncle Chris. ) I thought to myself, "Oh no. She's upset her picture doesn't look as nice as mine," and braced for a possible tantrum. Instead this is the conversation that unfolded:

E: Are those the only colors you're using?
K: Yes.
E: Oh. It isn't very pretty. 
K: Well, lots of horses are brown, so I made my horse brown.
E: It's just a picture, Mommy. It doesn't have to be like the real horse. See, look at mine. Look at all the colors. See how pretty it is? I like to make things pretty.

Huh. Now, I was the one looking back and forth between our two pictures with the frown on my face. She was right. Mine wasn't very pretty. It was neat and tidy and looked fairly nice, but it was completely boring. I wondered how old I was when it stopped occurring to me that I could color with any crayon I wanted? I'll be honest, it never dawned on me for one minute that I could have colored that horse pink or orange or green and it DEFINITELY didn't occur to me to make it multicolored. But, I think that is something I probably would have done as a kid. So, when did I lose that innate creativity?

As we were cleaning up, Lainey flipped through her coloring book and came to a picture of a hippo colored completely purple. She sighed, looked at me, and asked, "was this you?" I admitted it was indeed mine and she gave a little shake of her head and reminded me, "it doesn't have to be all one color, Mommy."

I'll do better next time, Lainey. Thanks for the reminder!

Lainey was right...hers is much prettier!