How sad life must be for Trixie: All her Crayolas come in just one color - black.

When I was little I never had whole crayons. They were always little stubs from crayons that had been broken in half over the years. My sisters and I ended up with an ice cream pail full of crayons at one point. When I finally got a set of crayons to call my own, I put scotch tape around the middle of each crayon so they wouldn't randomly break while I was colouring. :D

Scotch tape around crayons? That is ridiculously funny. I had an old baby wipes box full of them as a kid, and a cookie tin of colored pencils. My friend used to offend my delicate sensibilities by suggesting I had orange hair because the shade was closer to the orange crayon than the red. Still haven't quite gotten over that.

I discovered, after despairing at the excessively large number of broken crayons my children owned, that if you melt all broken crayons of a like colour very gently together in a saucepan, and pour them into moulds, you can make large "sidewalk" crayons for colouring large areas. They still never used them, so I threw them away when we moved.

Actually, DavidNYC, if you look very closely you can see a gray one, too. ;-)

Heyyyyyy, that sippy cup is lidless! What a big girl!

And, forest green is my favorite color - even if it is in black and white/gray!

My 20 month old breaks tons of crayons. We've recently discovered a new crayon product made by Crayola. It's a twist up crayon stylus that is a plastic barrel with a cylinder of crayon inside. She hasn't discovered that it twists up, so for now we are safe from her twisting it and just breaking pieces of crayon off.

hi! look at her mouth is shaped like an 'o' looks like shes concentrating hard... is this going to be scribble week??? you should think about it.

We are witnessing "classic trixie" here. There is nothing like a black and white still photo. It's so crisp, clean and classic. What a contrast to do a black and white picture with coloring crayons in the mix. I'm curious though...Is that a "Got Milk" moustache that trixie is sporty?

haley: That's a cup of ice water in the foreground, and she has a piece of ice in her mouth.

nikole: no milk moustache in this picture. I think it must be the light.

Shhh! This is very intense.....it's little picasso in the makings. Now do I put the ears here or there...hmm!

to e and V.H.: When I was little, I can remember the 'one' bad thing I did (I was the stereotypical good, nice kid; I'm sure I had other moments, but this is the one time I remember being in trouble): I deliberately broke all the new crayons in a box in kindergarten.

I knew it wasn't a good thing to do (though my strong midwestern roots argued that the crayons were just as useful) and that other people might not appreciate it; I felt slightly guilty at the time, but I almost couldn't help myself. I wanted to see what would happen if I did do something bad, for the novelty, but even more, there was something completely irresistable about the way those crayons felt snapping. . . .snap. . . snap. . . snap.

I had to color with those crayons for the rest of the year, while the other kids got the new box my mom bought. Served me right, and was entirely fair. I didn't really begrudge it much, and in fact, I'd bet if I could have expressed it in those terms, I felt the reward was far greater than the punishment.

Wow, fred, how did you manage to snap them all without getting caught in the process?

It reminds *me* of the one time I wanted to see what would happen if I was bad (I was also the stereotypically good kid). I was in nursery school, and at the time, much taller than all the other kids. Sometimes we'd pillow-fight in the nap area - all harmless, good fun.

But one day, I wanted to see what would happen if I pushed it too far. Would I get sent to my cubby (the standard punishment) and miss snack? So I took the biggest pillow I could find (a long orange sucker - I still remember) and started bashing the other kids as hard as I could while shouting out "En garde!" (Someone had figured out that this was a pillow-fighting term and had introduced it to us all.)

Well, after I thumped a few too many kids just a little bit too hard (and it wasn't that hard - I mean, these were pillows), I did wind up getting sent to my cubby. I felt pretty bad, but not so bad, because I knew I had intentionally brought it upon myself. And since I was ordinarily such a good kid, my behavior was written off by the teachers. (Who must have wondered, "What's gotten into David?")

I had to play with the broken kids for the rest of the year, while my mom bought new kids for the school.

hehe David.

I personally have an obsession with crayons... particularly of the Crayola variety. Actually, it is more the colors than the crayons themselves, and I have my 120-box arranged by shade, hue, etc. with a map of where each color is and what it is called.

sad, i know. The worst part is... I won't use those crayons: that's how I know they won't break.

I think I might have a thing about the smell of them as well. That waxy whiff! That safe clean smell! Reminds you of primary school. I sometimes peeled the paper off just so I could smell the bits which were not yet dusty and scratched.

I use to like melting the crayons. I remember growing up I never had good crayons either they were always fat stumps with dirty specks of other colors or something in them. But once I left one near the radiator and it became an really cool waxy puddle from then on I wanted to melt them all and color with giant puddle shaped wax!

Maybe you could teach Trixie how to color curley Qs, or just round shapes. I taught this little girl a long time ago to scribble round in like a curlly line because all she ever did was straight line scribbles. She actually loved it! It was like more fun!

Remember that white paste. Am I the only one who snuck bites?
Keeyah

Keeyah, No!! I just turned 69 last Sat. and I still remember the paste taste!!!!!

I would advise against melting the crayons in the microwave in little cupcake holders. It def. is a fire hazard :)