“Is it summer now?” my son asks.

“It’s 2 degrees outside,” I say. “It’s still winter. It won’t be summer for a long time.”

“But the snow’s melted,” he insists. He’s looking out the window of our minivan at the patchwork of snow and grass on our neighbors’ yards. His four-year-old brain is always working, making connections, trying to figure things out.

“The snow comes and goes all winter,” I explain. “We still have a few months before summer.”

At home, we play inside. My daughter tells me she wants to paint, and my son agrees, so I set them up at the kitchen table with their tray of Crayola paints and brushes, cups of water, and paper.

A few years ago, I took a beginner watercolor class and loved it. I had the best intentions to keep up with painting after the class was over, but other priorities got in the way. My husband and I bought our first house. We had a baby boy, then a baby girl. My box of watercolor supplies—paints, brushes, a palette, a rag for blotting, and a pad of watercolor paper—ended up in a closet.

And that’s where they stayed. Until two weeks ago, when I saw a book of beginner watercolor tutorials and bought it on a whim. In the evenings, after the kids are asleep, I’ve been following simple step-by-step instructions to paint flowers, fruit, and the occasional donuts. The kids have been looking through my small-but-growing collection of simple watercolor paintings, and they want to make their own.

I love that I’m painting again, and I love that I’ve inspired them.

I sit at the kitchen table between my two children to supervise and assist as they paint their own masterpieces. My son knows what he’s doing and gets right to work. I show my daughter how to dip her brush in the water and get the paint wet before she can put color on her paper.

My son paints a round-ish brown shape. “Are any flowers brown?” he asks.

“Most flowers turn brown when they dry up at the end of summer,” I answer. “All the flowers in the garden are pretty brown right now.”

Through the kitchen window I see our backyard, covered in patchy snow just like the yards we passed on our way home. The garden area is empty except for a few leftover stems, shriveled leaves, and wilted zinnia heads. It’s only January, but I’m already eager to plant new seeds to make the garden lively again.

“This can be a winter flower,” my son says. He adds a green stem and leaves to the brown blob, then paints a grey splotch above his flower to make clouds.

My daughter asks to drink the water in her cup. I tell her no and explain that the water is full of paint (and therefore “icky.”) I go to the living room to retrieve her water bottle and grab a few of my own brushes and paints. The kids seem happily occupied. Maybe I can get a little of my own painting done, too.

As much as I’ve been enjoying my return to watercolor painting, I haven’t created anything I consider truly “good.” So far my paintings rank anywhere from “fine” to “okay” to “eh.” I tell myself the same things I tell my kids—nobody is good at anything right away, it takes practice to get better, and it’s okay to do things just for fun—but it’s hard to push past this awkward phase.

I get my brush wet and paint a few brown semi-circles to represent the centers of flowers. I add some pink lines coming off the brown spots—petals. The water and color ripple gently across the textured paper, reminding me that it’s worth it to keep trying. It’s pleasant and expressive and fun, even if I’m no good at it yet.

“What are you painting, Mommy?” my son asks, leaning over to peek at my paper. “Oh!” he says. “Those are nice flowers!”

“Thank you!” I say. “They’re cone flowers.”

He rinses his brush, gets some yellow paint, and adds a big round sun to his picture across from the brown flower and grey clouds. My daughter uses lots of red, painting vivid lines and spots deliberately around her piece of paper. She sees me watching her and points to her cup again. “Please drink it?” she asks.

Once again I tell her no, and redirect her to her water bottle. I don’t understand her obsession with wanting to drink the paint water. My son tells me his painting is finished and asks me if I like it.

“I do!” I say. “It looks a lot like the flowers in my garden now that it’s winter.”

“Yeah!” he says, and looks over at my paper again. “I like your cone flower, Mommy.”

“I like it too,” I say, even though I’m not sure I do. “Maybe we’ll have to plant some cone flowers in the garden this summer.”

A layer of snow covers the flower bed along the chain link fence at the back of our yard. I think of the frozen ground underneath it, and the bulbs I planted back in the fall. I hope I planted the bulbs deep enough, in the right kind of soil, at the right time of year. If I did it right, they should sprout in just a few months.

For now, though, it’s still winter. The ground is cold and hard, and nothing is growing out there. The flowers are brown. My watercolor paintings are clumsy. I’m still trying to figure out what I want to achieve, and how to make them to look that way. My children are small, needy, and learning from me every day as they grow into their own individual selves. In a few months, when it’s spring, I hope to see hyacinths, tulips, and daffodils blooming right where I planted them.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series “Alive.”