From scratch

I told Packrat a few days ago that parenting was stretching my artistic creativity. I am not artistic naturally. One of my best friends and I bonded all those years ago because we were the only two in our class that failed art and that common failure between us was the beginning of a friendship that has lasted 20 years. I am my mother's disappointment in this respect because every bone in my mother's body is artistic. That failed still life of a papaya all those years I think ranks up there as s severe failure in parenting me I suspect.

Anyway, I am NOT artistic. But I see the importance in allowing my children to be artistic and to DO things with them rather than to BUY things for them.

Their Grandma and Grandaunt's birthday was during the past week. We owe these two women a great debt of gratitude because they give up chunks of their weeks to be with the twins. So, our before-after-school project last week was to make presents for them.

First, we decided on clay figurines. That was challenging for me because I needed to figure out what to make and how to make it. Then, there was the issue of the clay itself, that unlike dough does not take kindly to being cut up by a cookie cutter. And clay, unlike dough, was sticky much to Jordan's dismay and displeasure. Eventually we managed to fashion something that looked decent. A heart for each of them and a turtle for Grandma from Evan and a flower for Grandaunt from Jordan.




















That meant the twins' present to the Grandma and Grandaunt. But we felt that we needed to get them something too and we did. And because we did, the twins had even more opportunity to have fun. On top of wanting the twins to make things and mucking about, I'm also trying very hard to set an environmental example for them. A while ago, Packrat and I decided that we were going to try to be parents who weren't going to buy into the whole goodie bag sprial. And part of that was so that we didn't contribute to environmental waste and we wanted to teach the twins that too. But at the same time, we know that little children like to rip and tear wrapping paper apart and sometimes it was actually necessary to wrap up gifts.

So the alternative this time was to get them to make the wrapping paper that they could help to rip. The bonus was that it kept them occupied for quite a while although some of the mucking about was paint and wrapper unrelated. But since the cost was some basic coloured paint, a large piece of mahjong paper, some sponges, cheap brushes as well their bare hands and strangely enough a plastic spoon, I had no issue with it although clean up was going to be a bit of a b!*ch.



























Thankfully, the paint was washable and it was nothing a scrub brush and a big pail of water couldn't solve. And we had one-of-the-kind wrapping paper for the presents for the precious one-of-a-kind Grandma and Grandaunt.

It will however, take a little while before I recover from the creatively intense week that I've had to create the presents. Admittedly, the easiest bit was buying the gifts but on hindsight, I think it was more stressful, trying to find the gifts that we eventually bought instead of supervising the twins' constructive muckabout.


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