After I did the painting, Mama Hugs, for Isabela, Diego said that he wanted one too. So here is Diego and I giving each other a “nose kiss.”

And here is the painting in Diego’s room. I love that what he looks at when we wakes up and before he goes to sleep is his mother giving him a huge hug and connecting together with a silly nose kiss.

You may notice the painting is, in fact, crooked. It is now at the perfect height for Fiona to bang it. Fortunately the “glass” is actually a really thick plastic. And you may also notice the very red walls and the very red blanket.

Ah yes. Red. There seems to be something about Diego and the color red. This summer I decided to paint the kids rooms and wanted their input on colors. Immediately Diego choose this color of red and Isabela chose a dark pink. I was all, “No way! You have to choose a lighter color.” But we couldn’t agree on anything and finally came to an impass. Weeks went by.

Finally I started thinking about something in one of the attachment videos, from the series Helping Children Grow Up, by Gordon Neufeld. He was talking about how children need “room to be themselves.” Of course, he was talking about it in the metaphorical sense, but I realized that this applied in the literal sense as well. I needed to give my the kids their rooms as their own.

I mean, how much time do I really spend in my kids rooms? Mostly we play in the living room and kitchen. And why can’t I just get over my issue of not liking those colors? Why can’t I just let them like those colors and immerse themselves in them?

So I let them pick their colors again and they immediately went back and chose the exact same colors (out of hundreds and hundreds of color swatches) that they had originally chosen.

And you know something, now it has grown on me. I really like those colors a lot.

Here is Isabela’s very pink room.