I should have known better.

But I fell for it again.

I bullheadedly charged into teaching about “patience” without any back-up plan, prayer defense, or “abort mission” button.

It seemed so simple to say, “That’s right, Viv! Patience is waiting with a glad heart” as I drew a nice big fruit on our “Fruit of the Spirit” board.

Everything seemed to be going so well.

Then Lia pooped in the tub.

She was upset; I was grossed out.

(Opportunity: Patience.)

After everything was scoured clean, we tried to make a tornado in a jar (inspired by our current read-aloud The Wonderful Wizard of Oz). It worked okay, but the real tornado came when Viv got blue food coloring on her hands and LOST it. Really. Lost. It. (Opportunity: Patience.)

But then I lost it. Because, well, the frantic crying over a few blue blotches just got under my skin.

In the end, the experience provided an opportunity for us to have a heart-to-heart about how Viv’s friends will love her despite the color of her hands (she really was concerned about this), and about how some fears are plain-old debilitating and we must tell ourselves to cool it or we’ll miss out on all kids of opportunities. Once we both calmed down, we decided to address the problem diplomatically. We looked online for “how to remove food coloring from hands” and discovered that scrubbing some toothpaste on the hands for 2 – 3 minutes (more patience) will do the deed; and make you smell fresh, too!

While we were rinsing the blue blotches away, Viv noticed a slight tint remaining. She smiled and said, “You were totally right. It really isn’t a big deal to have blue ink on my hands.”