Art or “Hey, someone puked a rainbow”
Art at School
So everyone encourages their kids to do art. I mean, even if you don’t give a crap about their ability to hold a pencil one day or care about encouraging creativity then you want to do it just to get them out of your hair for a while. It’s heartwarming, really. Your kid sitting busy at a table and not ripping your current reading material to shreds or calmly eating the entire box of Godiva truffles or whatever else they do quietly. (What, your kids never did anything like that?)
Later, they run up to you and show you what they did. They’re proud. It’s so cute. Cutecutecute. Whatever that green scribble is, they did it. And they say they did it for you. Awwwwww…..
Then, they want you to hang it up. Hang something on the wall once and you are stuck doing this forever.
***We use art “clotheslines” for the newest productions (until the kids forget about them and we can take them down). You can buy pretty versions of them at Land of Nod, or just make your own, since it’s really simple. I made two lines across the front of the built-in bookcases out of some rope I bought at Target, some adhesive wall mounted knobs at each end and some small 2″ clothespins. I decorated the clothespins with glued on flat wood flower and butterfly beads and put a few other wood beads on the line itself just to enliven empty lines. The only thing to remember is that adhesive wall hooks have a weight limit so don’t try to pack on the picts. I’ve also seen some nice modern takes on this using Ikea wire curtain things.***
After an intensive nine months or so of fostering all their artistic ambitions we ended up with about 3 or 4 baskets of art work. Good sized baskets. Stuck under the coffee table. And in the bookcase. And next to the never-used-again fireplace. I recently read some articles about what people do with their kid’s old artwork (I’d link it but I can’t find it). Some people immediately recycle them all. Some people keep them until their kids have kids. Some people display them until they come up with a new crop. What do I do? Obviously, I’m a hoarder, but I’m trying to reform. I went through them all in one night (it’s not really that hard to do) and sorted them into Recycle, Keep for Gift(wrap)s, and These Might Be Art.
A short note about “These Might Be Art”: Okay, so I’m probably utterly deluded. But Z’s got such a great combination of colors on these paintings… I used to be pleased with my own art efforts in school but I did mostly black and white, not color. A’s paintings and drawings are more minimalist, but sometimes they have this sort of Japanese calligraphy/ ink blot thing going. She also did this pretty damn good likeness of Cookie Monster that’s recognizable from across the room, even though I am about positive it’s actually just a big blue spiky splat.
So what am I planning on doing with these favorites of mine? Well, frame it, okay? I want to do an art wall for my kids. But.. rather than continuously add frames to the wall until it falls down and kills us all with glass shards in the next earthquake I wanted something made to accommodate change. Ideally it would be something that would stay mounted on the wall while I did this. Maybe once a year or once a season or something. ***A quick search and I found this: Lil Davinci Art Cabinets. I have high hopes for this product since the reviews at Amazon are almost uniformly good. And they hold a lot of art, sort of like an art Pez dispenser. You can put new ones in front of old ones just by opening the frame and mashing them in. Sounds good to me! (Although the name is sort of embarrassing.) ***
I’ll put up a picture when I get it shipped to me. And I find time to put them on the wall… by myself (“Dear Husband” does not do these things).
Promise.
** No one is paying me for mentioning their product or for saying nice things. I wish they would.**
(The astericks** don’t really mean anything except that I’m diverging from my random narrative to explain)
9/27/12 Edit: Wow! They’re here already! They came in 2 days! Too bad I’m not ready to put them up.
10/2/12 Edit: I am an idiot! I thought they were painting on 8.5″x11″ but all their stuff is on 9″x12″! I’m going to have to sit in the living room with a paper cutter and chop everything down to fit the frames! Or…I could buy some 9″x12″s and not tell…
10/3/12 Edit: Got the new frames. Only got half the number of necessary frames. Will cut down some but keep the larger frames for those I can’t bear to chop up. heh heh.
It comes naturally
So this title probably makes you question whether I got twins naturally or had them in vitro or something. Just for the record, they showed up all on their own and was a complete and utter surprise to me. And everyone else. I’ll write about it later. What this title really refers to is knowing how to be a mother.
So I don’t feel that I am naturally maternal. I wrote about the installation of new instincts, but that doesn’t really cover it. I’m not a kinkajoo in the wild. Maybe a honey badger, but that’s sort of 2011.
When my kids were infants I was mostly caught up in the rush to keep them alive efficiently. I didn’t have a lot of those melty urges to cuddle them up. Sometimes they were funny or v. cute, but they were also these little creatures that functioned below the level of the cats.
My friends, several of whom had already had kids, were on the other side of the maternal scale. I used to receive emails thanking God for their children and how great it was to dedicate their life to their child’s growth. When I wrote back and tried to be funny… well.. I think they got a little freaked out. Could it have been the tone of needy desperation that drifted through my words when I looked for moral support and commiseration…? Nahh… Probably didn’t like the larva comparison.
I started looking for support elsewhere. At my lowest point I started reading news articles where parents did… well.. very bad things. Just so I could say, “There’s someone worse than me!” Next I found forums (tucked neatly out of plain sight) where people I could relate to voiced some of my feelings. Confusion over what you’re supposed to do. Desire to wander out and go shopping. Waiting all day for naptime/bedtime. Next I tried looking at parenting humor books but most of them did not ring a bell. Finally, I followed some links until I found.. surprise! Snarky Mom Blogs! It was a revelation. People wrote evilly about being a bad/good parent! Ha! So suddenly I found people I could relate to besides the gently humorous ones in the first forum. People will that evil edge to their voice. It wasn’t just me!
Actually, a childcare professional I spoke to said she worked with a lot of families (like mine, she implied). People who had kids and didn’t really know what to do with them. So it’s not that abnormal to look at your child and wonder what this creature is doing here.
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Most amusing parenting humor books:
The World According to Toddlers by Shannon Seip and Adrienne Hedger – gentle humor in a mixed format (easy to absorb in short periods) that really relates to most of the toddler experience. Cheers you up. Makes you laugh.
Go the F**k to Sleep by Adam Mansbach and read by Samuel L. Jackson – the audiobook version makes it so utterly cool. Reading it as a book is fine, but hearing Samuel L. Jackson read it to you… awesome.
Snarky blogs:
Scary Mommy – blunt, get your hands dirty, but not really mean mom blog, although the Confessional board IS scary. Full of “at least I don’t do that” moments.
Rants from Mommyland – the favorite rants section is pretty funny. One quote from the site calls it “a wildly popular sanctuary for all moms who are about to lose their damn minds”
The Imperfect Parent – I used to like this site, but there seems to have been a redesign or something. I’m not even sure how the Imperfect Parent part figures into the site’s theme now. If I can’t identify with your rants then I am not your target audience any more.
Pregnant Chicken – Nicer site but still funny. I just got a weird jolt seeing that their most recent post is exactly like a listmania list I posted in March. Guess other Moms have the same reactions, eh?
Photos
Probably hives
I just went through the last three year’s worth of photos and found out that they’re almost all of my kids. Or sometimes a cat. Once in a while it will be a rash. Either on a kid or a cat.
So that’s what I’ll have to remember these years with. Did anything else happen during this time? I cannot recall. I was really looking for photos to enliven this blog. Even the polaroids in the upper corner aren’t from my stash but were provided by the theme author. (The random images seem to show the phallic flower a lot. Hm…)
I also found a few photos of curious diaper poos, taken just in case I had to show them to the doctor. That would make a great gallery for this blog, eh?
Since I had children
When I was in high school we learned in biology something that went like, “Nature makes babies cute so their mothers don’t eat them.” Such a charming idea, I used to think, definitely agreeing that something would have to come into play to sustain the species.
Now I see that there is definitely a change in me since I had kids. I was never a woman who went, “Awwww, can I hold him?” when people had a new baby. I never ever babysat (unless it happened without me really realizing it, which, now that I think about it, did happen). I had a thing for cats, certainly, but kids…? Not really. I could identify with them but feel an urge to take care of them? Nooo…
But after I had kids there was definitely something there.
A WHOLE NEW AREA OF PARANOIA!!
They’re going to fall down the stairs. They’re going to swallow something. They’re going to run off in traffic and get hit by a car being driven by a sex offender.
Did you notice they issue warnings about cutting up grapes for kids but never tell you when you can stop? I really would like to know. When can I stop cutting up grapes?? Is there a crucial line where my kid will suddenly be SO UNCOOL because I’m still cutting up their grapes? Anyway, I hate cutting up grapes. Also, I read that you’re not supposed to let toddlers near toilets on their own because they can drown. That’s why they sell toilet locks. It’s not just for really cruel practical jokes. I don’t let them go to the bathroom on their own in the middle of the night because of this. (The drowning part, not as a practical joke.) I make everyone walk in front of them when they go down the stairs just in case they have to be caught.
The thought of them getting hurt or someone taking them stabs me in the gut in a completely visceral reaction. The voiceover of the nature film that says “In the wild, babies never survive the death of their mother” and the accompanying video of the orphan clutching the dead body of its mother as it stares into the camera freaks me out completely. (Nevermind that I sometimes envy the mother). It never bothered me before. I swear.
So, is this the mothering instinct? Not quite. But I would probably defend them to the death if I don’t eat them first.