Baby Bug is a vicious dictator of the crayons. She rules her subject (me) with an iron fist. No one can question the authority of the Crayon Dictator. She tells me when I’m going to color, where I’m going to color and what color I’m going to color with. She even tells me which end of the crayon I can use. No wrong-end coloring is going on during her watch. Nosireebob.

“Dit down, Mommy,” she commands.
“Orange!” she says, handing me the orange crayon.
“Pumpkin!” she says, hovering over me with the next crayon in hand.

I’m usually happy to oblige. I like coloring. I can think of way worse ways to spend my time. Like listening to Barney sing for example. So I sit there at her little IKEA table and happily color an orange pumpkin. Just when I get the outline done and have started shading in the sections, she takes the orange crayon out of my hand and hands me magenta.

“Pink, Mommy. Cur pink!”

Alrighty then. We now have an orange-outlined pumpkin with pink sides. I can roll with that. I’m creative. So I ask her for the green crayon because my bright pink pumpkin needs a bright green curly stem. Noooooooo, I can’t color with green because she is coloring with green. Of course! “GoooReeeen” is for Baby Bug. All the time with the green.

Until suddenly we have no green crayons left because she has taken them all over the house with her and lost them. I have found green crayons in my shoes. I have found green crayons in my car, melting on my leather seats. My little dictator has a thing for green crayons. I think I’m going to have to order those boxes of crayons that only come in one color (in green).

I get stuck coloring a lot. I mean a lot, a lot. Like all day long, a lot. And since I’m bored out of my skull ever the entrepreneur, I thought up a get-rich-slow plan. I do that when I’m stuck somewhere…. I decided that Baby Bug and I could make wrapping paper and sell it in my Etsy shop. I’ve been hatching this plan for months.

I know this idea is not really going to sell well for anybody who has kids who can color wrapping paper for them but it might be a fun gimmick. Who knows. It’s fun to wrap presents in silly colored-on sheets of paper. They’re colorful and unique. It’s sort of eco-friendly too. We were going to color anyway, so this way the many many sheets of paper are being reused instead of littering up my refrigerator or being smashed into the trash can.

I’d only charge a buck or two and I’d design some really neat packaging for the sheets of wrapping paper to go in. I was supposed to be working on the packaging design and have some samples up in my shop before I posted this but I don’t. (update: this was completed during today’s nap.)

Why? Because I was coloring pumpkins and pink kitties and doggies and bugs. And also because Baby Bug only takes one nap a day and it is never long enough for me to get all my projects done. So instead I will just share the joy of coloring with the dictator. As you can see, I do rebel and get my own designs in here and there.

I always wanted to be a textile designer.

And…. We’re live!

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In other news: Guess who’s actually blogging? She took a lot of convincing, believe me. I’ve been nagging her for months. Well, she has finally crossed over to the dark side. Please go say hello but whatever you do, do not give her your instant message screen name. She is trouble.