finger thumb

mess and drawings

Sometimes I walk around my house and just despair of it all. Its so MESSY! The crumbs on counter tops, the corn and peas and rice sprinkled on the floor under the chair where the Little Guy sits, the drops of liquid that were spilled on the linoleum days ago (orange juice, milk, who knows?) that have collected dirt and are now a trail of little brown dots. And I just cleaned this bathroom, so why does it smell like pee already? And toys, toys, everywhere the toys, as though the tide has swept through my living room and left the detritus of three different preschools in its wake. Nothing stays organized. The playmobil is mixed in with the lego and the crayons are mixed in with the markers. And the paper. Oh, the paper! The pieces and scraps and piles of paper are going to drive me to drink I tell you. The bills are mixed in with the school papers and the church papers and the work papers and a definite drift is forming on the kitchen counter. Its seems as though the counter tops abhor a vacuum because as soon as I spend a morning sifting through it all, and throwing it away or recycling it or filing it in the proper place, as soon as there is an empty counter top my children (and my husband, it must be said) sweep through and before I know it there is another pile of paper there. Sigh. 

I'm trying to see the beauty in it these days. I think at this point in my life it is a battle that will not be won. There are more important things to do, or at least, clean counter tops are not an imperative. So last night, instead of being angry or sad or filled with despair about it, I just took pictures of a few pieces of paper that made me smile. 

The Little Dude made this hand monster for me. He has a string "so you can carry him around with you Mom!" How handy. I love how the google eyes are taped on, and that he is talking out the side of his monster-y mouth.

And here are some tiny quick super hero drawings done by Hubs for L.D. at his request. Lego minifig super heroes of course. And that last one is the Little Dude himself, lego-ified. These are tiny, like an inch square, and I love them. Simple and fast and spontaneous. 

And now, I'm going to go and ignore the mess in my house. And you should too. Life is too short to waste on picking up toys. After all, there is laundry to be done.
 

draw big!

I was at the grocery store the other day and they were having a sale on toilet paper. That, in and of itself, is not the point here. Sure, I bought a couple of packs of discount price yet high quality butt wipe and felt good about that. But no, the important thing was that since it was on sale, the grocery store had wheeled out a couple of skids of Cottonelle or Cashmere or whatever they call it these days and just set them directly on the floor. And each layer of toilet paper packages was stacked with these big, lovely sheets of cardboard between them. Luckily one layer was almost finished and so I was able to grab two big sheets of the stuff to hustle out to my car to be put to good and artful use someday at home.  And I don't know about you, but the toughest hours, parenting-wise, in my house are from 4:00 when the Little Dude gets off the bus till dinner at 6:00. There can be a lot of fighting, whining, and random angry outbursts over the smallest things. And I find it really, REALLY helps if I have an activity for the kids to do. And I don't mean an activity I have to preside over and walk them through (I have dinner to make y'all) but something they can engage with on their own. No multi-step, paint and glue mess-making extravaganzas (those are for the leisurely weekend mornings). Just something simple, like "Here's a giant piece of cardboard and some markers. Have fun!" And fun they did have! The Little Dude was very focused on making swords. First he traced a toy sword he already had, and then he decided to make his own. 

I had two sheets of cardboard, one for the Little Dude and one for the Little Guy, so as to avoid the inevitable conflict. But since the Little Dude is a much more competent drawer than the Little Guy (being nearly three years older) it quickly became a game of watching-your-big-brother-draw. Luckily L.D. likes to draw almost as much as L.G. likes to be drawn for, so it was a win-win situation. 

I particularly like this kitty cat that the Little Guy commissioned from his big brother. 

And he also incorporated the negative space of the ripped out corner of one of the sheets of cardboard as the chomped-out bite space of a "deep sea electric eel". Please note that is is transparent (as many deep sea creatures are) and antomically correct, featuring internal organs, intestines, a penis and a rectum. Because, science.

On a side note, this was a really fun exercise in the concept of scale. If you like drawing with your kids, you should totally get some sort of big paper or cardboard and give this a try. It really rejuvenates the experience for them, and you get some really great results. Also, it kept them busy for, like, an hour, which is awesome in my books. And think about the drawing supplies you give them too. I put out a box of standard crayola washable markers which got totally ignored in favour of some sharpies. They don't usually get to use the big sharpies (those are typically mom and dad territory) but I let them have them since they were outside and it couldn't bleed through onto my table top or anything, and they LOVED it. Its the whole forbidden fruit thing. Or in this case I should say forbidden markers.

When the Little Dude tired of entertaining his little brother (those swords are not going to draw themselves!) the Little Guy finally decided to do a bit of drawing himself. Not as elaborate or large scale as the Little Guy's...

...but very satisfying none-the-less. 

Now I've just got to find some more big cardboard. I'll be watching for the next toilet paper sale with a whole new agenda. 

vacation destination

So apparently we are going on vacation. I had no idea, but its all been planned and laid out for me, and since planning the half the work, who am I to say no? Here's where we are going. Do you recognize it? Our next/first ever family vacation destination as illustrated by the Little Dude? I didn't at first either. But noting the tropical fish, I was optimistic and said "Oh, is it the Caribbean?" But alas, I was wrong.

"No Mom, its all underwater! See, there are two sharks, a big one and a little one, and three kinds of Jelly fish and some seaweed because its very far underwater. Its the Marianas Trench! I want to go there, because we can go down really far and see whales and giant squids fighting and oar fish and hatchet fish and blob fish. We can all go. In a submarine!" When I demurred that perhaps it might be a bit out of our budget and not as much, um, fun as one would hope he said "See the jelly fish? That one is a quilt jelly fish!"

Oh, well then, if there is a quilt jelly fish, I'm totally in. 

(I doubt very much that a quilt jelly fish exists, but I love it all the more since it appears to have been invented by my five year old in the hopes of persuading me to accompany him on his trip to the bottom of the ocean. Also, that is a reasonably accurate rendering of a traditional Housetop quilt. Looks like someone's been perusing my quilt books...)