A RealFamilies RealFun Blog

May 18 2009

She's the crafty one, not me

Category: At Home

Having fond memories of my mom teaching me to watercolor, as a new parent I looked forward to doing arts and crafts with my children. I envisioned hours spent quietly drawing, or wearing artist's smocks and painting at easels. I even created a crafts drawer in my dining room hutch, filled with coloring books, crayons, stickers, and markers. Then Nathan ruined my mommy art fantasy. To him, crafts are like chores, best to be avoided or done half-heartedly. He has as much patience coloring as he does making his bed.

Paul's had a much better time getting Nathan to do crafts. They've made elaborate homemade Valentine's Day cards for me and Nathan's teachers. Granted, he's starved for male attention and would do just about anything for his dad, including using glitter paint and gluing lace on to paper hearts.

Lucie's the family artist. Being a self-starter, she gets paper and crayons out on her own and raids the hutch drawer, making sure to restock her backpack with stickers and markers. I try to encourage her as much as possible, keeping the diaper bag filled with crayons and paper, so we can doodle together at all the meetings I drag her to.

Even so, my heart's not into doing crafts. Maybe it's my failed attempts with Nathan. More likely it's because I'm still burnt out from my four years of art school -- back in the '80s. There's a reason I'm a writer and not a graphic designer -- doing art is just not my thing any more, no matter how much I wish it were.

However, I'm not worried about Lucie suffering from crafts deprivation. My friend Julie puts together a craft project for the kids at our mom's club monthly meeting. She's the one who forces me to sit down with Lucie and patiently do art projects with her. Today, we created a flower out of a Popsicle stick, markers, glue, and foam cutouts. Then we stuck it in a plastic cup filled with dirt and flower seeds.

The dirt's been shaken and stirred so often, that I'll be shocked if the snapdragons bloom. Although I happily put in my monthly craft duty, I'm looking forward to when preschool begins and I can turn over the craft duties to Lucie's teachers. Boy, if my art teachers could see me now.

 

May 11 2009

Hot, hot, hot

Category: Kids & Growing Up

As part of fire safety week, one of the local fire departments visited Nathan's and Lucie's school. You could tell how excited the kids were when the huge red fire truck pulled up in the front parking lot. The preschool boys were practically jumping up and down and had a hard time leaving the front lobby to go to their classroom.

All the students, including the preschoolers, had a video presentation. They received a bag of safety information and plastic fire hats. The children also were taught safety tips like crawling on the floor and having a family meeting place.

Since then, Nathan and Lucie continue to don their hats and play fire fighter. Nathan likes to quiz Lucie on fire safety. This is when I add my two cents about staying away from the stove (Nathan has a really bad habit of getting too close to it to smell the food) and not pressing the buttons on the microwave (Lucie's new naughty behavior).

The fire department sure made an impression on my kids -- and on some of the parents, too. There seemed to be a lot of moms hanging around at school and joining their kids for lunch that day.

I wonder if it's a job requirement for firemen to be good looking because these guys certainly were. If I didn't have an appointment after preschool got out, I would have stayed, too.

 

May 8 2009

Chinese fortune cookies

Category: Just Me

If I owned a Chinese fortune cookie factory, I'd have a special line of fortune cookies just for parents. Here are a few sample cookie verses:

Skills learned when pregnant quickly forgotten.

Teething is temporary.

Expensive toys are easily broken.

Grape Pedialyte? Better have a purple carpet.