art class

Our preschool held a competition to win four free art classes. I won with: "I think Monet would have wanted me to have them." I took all three girls to the class this morning, and I was anticipating an enriching, artistic experience. Just picture this:

There are five tidy children sitting around an table, their tidy mothers beside them, before them all are fresh sheets of paper, paint rollers with blue and yellow acrylics in trays. But none of them are painting. They are all watching my child. One boy *literally* with his mouth hanging agape in awe, watching my girl. Millie is squeezing the blue paint out of her roller onto her hand, and wiping it William Wallace Style on her face, her arms. Some of it makes it onto the paper, in fat, hand-shaped swipes. She gets paint on the chair, in her hair, her pants, she oozes it onto the paper and moves it around. She is lost in her 'artistic' expression with wild abandon.
I am perplexed, uttering useless things like "Um, well, Millie, uh, try to keep it on the paper, honey" as she makes blue explosions of paint by hitting the paper like a set of drums, splattering, those tidy, silent children's clean clothes. Remember I have two OTHER girls, one of whom is in the corner refusing to participate and instead is hollering like a monkey, and the other is coloring at the rubbing station.

I swear in Millie's former life she was a shepardess in the Welsh highlands. Maybe she's channeling her ancestors, but her barbarism exuberance would be better suited for a wilder age.