day 555 | march 11, 2012 | holi color play

Super Sunday. when i'd excitedly mentioned that a few of my friends were touring india and that i'd just been pinged for a possible india assignment, mommy E of bottomsupblog shared an idea on celebrating holi festival, an indian celebration of color, here in singapore. :) instantly loved the idea, but i knew i had work to do to get roo onboard with it.


read about holi's history and meaning here.

when i giddily shared with roo that we would be throwing colored powder at each other, her immediate concern was the fact that we would get dirty. "that's the point roo, it's messy fun!" "you need to bring lots and lots of wet wipes, mommy. oh, and water too!"

i found it strange that i was the one going on with childlike fascination, while my daughter worried herself silly, asking me random questions about how we were going to get clean. this got me worried -- have i killed the fun, uninhibited side of my children by being too polite?

thanks to mommy E for organizing, getting the colors, and improvising add-ons with washable paints, and random food stuff (including ketchup!) :)

 one of the first solid hits for the day!

 and mommy E was super giddy. :) i think the adults may have had more fun with this.

 calling a stop to the powder throwing, until everyone gets in line.

 puffs of powder in the air

cuteness!

 right before A threw me a white bomb! shooting while running -- this is good practice. grin.

checked in on roo who was crying. some bits of powder got to her, and she didn't like it one bit. (i love her big fat tears dropping off her chin.) she ended up standing in the corner, turned away from the crazy color throwing.

 the two most powdered girls of the group.

love the colors! based on legend, the application of color is an expression of love, as krishna colored his soulmate's face to make them the same. this is the look of well-loved. ;)

once the powder ran out, folks went back to squeezing the last of the paints out of the bottles!

 ...and started using organic material. grin.

had a debrief with T, and asked if he would do this again, i got a hesitant 'yes.' :)

 kids were back at play after a quick wash-up.

 and a couple of group photos (thanks mommy K!)

during my debrief with roo, she mentioned that she 'feels bad' that she wasn't able to have fun during the games, and promised she would definitely get in on the action and 'fight' the next time we do this. she just bugged me this morning asking when we're doing it again! personal notes for next time is to source more holi powders (donations or supplier contacts welcome, grin!), and to rub to colors into more people's faces versus just throwing. i think we got off fairly clean.

while roo wasn't able to participate, i thought this was a great learning for her. the concept of regret because you didn't seize the moment, and a small tweak to hot-wiring her sense of adventure. planning more messy play for my darlings!