Naming the Animals

When I sit to do a craft that involves instructions I generally follow the directions, especially if it is a simple project or something I haven’t tried before. Sometimes this bothers me and makes me feel less creative than I like, but I just try to enjoy the task and forget about my silly perceived self-notions.

Some months back I was at the craft store looking for a craft project that I could do with my son. In the end I purchased a kit for making animal faces out of foam. It seemed pretty safe.

As it turned out, a three-year-old boy who has trouble sitting still and following directions can get overexcited while doing crafty things, but we still had a lot of fun and managed to make one of each of the four animals. In retrospect, crafts that involve googly-eyes may not be the best choice. I followed him around for a couple of days picking stray eyeballs up off of the floor and making sure he didn’t try to eat them or feed them to his little sister.

The other day daddy was hunting for something new and fun to do with the little man and saw the box of foam facial features sitting on the shelf collecting dust. So he got it down. Ignoring my suggestion that he use nice, safe glue dots, he instead opted for the gorilla glue that he keeps in his workbag. This made me more than a little nervous.

The two of them settled into the dining room table with their little bag o’ tricks (and the scary glue) and got down to business. My son first suggested making an elephant for his nana. His next request was a companion lion for his granddad. The elephant ended up with a bit of a leaky-eye problem and the lion has no ears, but they’re both ordinary enough looking animals.



















Then daddy hit his groove and his crazy creative streak kicked in. When his little protégé requested that they make a monkey for his Auntie Shmish, daddy said, “How about a tiger monkey?” Daddy’s carbon copy caught onto that idea pretty quickly, and before they were done they had made a liger for Auntie B and an elephonkey for Aunt EM.





























It’s special times like these that I’m reminded of how blessed I am to have a husband who possesses such a uniquely creative mind. It’s fun to watch my children learn to think outside of the box when it comes to creating. If it were my sole responsibility to nurture their imagination, they would always be putting the correct color with the correct number and all their foam animals would be of recognizable species. I’m also thankful that the nasty industrial glue did no permanent damage.

Updates and Musings

There is a horrible crick in my neck and my children are sure to believe that I no longer love them due to neglect, but I have triumphed over the scrapbook. No longer will it sneer at me and taunt me with the fact that I have had two-point-five years to put it all together. It is done. There will be the initial look-through during which my family members will click their tongues and awww at the tiny baby that my son used to be, and then the book will be slid onto a shelf where it will be forgotten and begin its long life as a dust collector. Yes, it will be nice to look through when my little baby is all grown-up, but so will the photo albums that only require the pictures to be slid into plastic pockets.

My husband has declared our home to be a “potty-training free zone”. This is not because my son has finally mastered this difficult chore which requires him to stop playing for forty-five seconds and go to the toilet. But rather because he feels it to be a lost cause. Apparently he has decided to take residence in the camp of “you can’t force a child to potty train; he has to be ready”; after the first frightful week I staked my tent in the “I’ve worked too hard to quit now” camp, so I’m afraid the poor child will not only be resistant but also confused.

The first day of spring always brings with it the pleasant expectation of bright flowers, rollicking at Nana’s house, and the promise of warm sunshine. This year I am even more pleased that the cold weather is retreating: the oil company delivered heating oil today. It is possible that building a fire pit in the middle of the living room floor and burning money to keep warm way be the cheaper way to go.

Remember When

I purchased a scrapbook before my son was born to chronicle his first year. It includes sonogram photos, pictures of my pregnant belly, and snapshots of the baby shower along with the usual first bath, first food, Christmas, and learning to walk keepsakes and pictures. He is now two and a half years old and I haven’t quite gotten to his first birthday party yet. My daughter is nine months old and her scrapbook hasn’t seen so much as a sticker.

Part of the trouble is that after I collect all of the supplies (markers, stickers, stencils, photos, memorabilia, etc.) I have to take them downstairs to the dining room table. That means there will be little hands groping around in search of items left too close to the edge of the table to smear with sticky peanut buttery fingers or use to make art on the walls with.

In my experience it is unsafe to attempt most craft projects without the aid of talking vegetables or cars to keep the children entertained. Even with creativity-leeching entertainment, it will only be a matter of minutes before someone needs a diaper change/potty break or a snack; or they just simply want to be involved with the fun new thing that is going on at the table.

Today, after much organizing and searching for misplaced pictures, I managed to complete one whole page and pre-plan another. It took an hour to choose a piece of colored paper, arrange three pictures, stencil captions in brown archival ink and decide where to put a sticker of Winnie-the-Pooh clutching a walking stick. No wonder I’m not finished yet.

I really am determined to complete it before my son’s third birthday in September. Maybe by the time I’m ready to buckle down and start his little sister’s scrapbook he will be old enough to play co-designer. If I continue at the current rate, my daughter will be four by the time her book is finished. After we have more children I’ll most likely resign myself to the fact that Baby’s First Year scrapbooks will be done in time to be presented as high school graduation gifts.