Crafting

Previously I've written about Lily starting to color. And I think I mentioned that she likes to finger paint, too. Her new favorite 'art' is to draw on what is essentially a Magna-Doodle but is called something else because it's produced by B. Toys. She loves to climb into her camp chair (a new skill!), and scribble away. Sometimes she concentrates really hard and puts her face like one inch away from the surface. She doesn't really get the animal shaped 'stamps' yet, but she likes to kiss them and then throw them on the floor.  

As Lily colors and paints, I've come to a dilemma: what to do with the stuff she makes. Part of me wants to be the mom who makes beautiful scrap books of all the important stuff she does so she can see it later. Part of me is a clutter-phobe that can't stand to have mail from yesterday sitting around. Part of me knows that these are not great works of art and she will make a million of them. And part of me thinks but she made this, how can I possibly ever part with it? 

I've come up with a couple of solutions. First of all, there's this blog. I've taken pictures of most things and written about it here so there is at least a record of The First Coloring and The First Painting. And on my phone there are pictures of the second, third, and fourth... 

The second answer is to create something from it. Like this thank you card we sent to our friends Jill and Jim in Duluth. After Lily was done finger painting, I took a picture of it, printed it on photo paper, traced a seahorse, cut it out, and glued it to some card stock. And tada! Instant art. I see many paint-photo cards in our future. 

Another example of this is our Halloween decorations. Lily painted with purple paint the other night while I did the dishes. Then today, after it dried, I cut out bat shapes from the paper and hung them in the window. The crinkly-ness from the paint adds to the bat-ness. 

I tried to have her paint a real pumpkin, but that was a disaster. So we have a fake light up pumpkin instead. Here's a picture of our full fall display. Amazing, I know.  

And finally, I also created a 'gallery' in our living room. We have this huge empty wall that we can't put anything on because we can't put any holes in the wall with nails. So last year I ordered these stick on removable and reusable frames so we could at least put something up there. They've been sitting in the to-do pile since then because I've been to lazy to print out pictures to put in them. I decided to finally put them to use and stick some of Lily's art in there. I have eight frames total, and when they fill up I will start taking things out and replacing them. It will be like an ever changing permanent display. 

It seems silly to be putting so much thought and effort into this art thing, but it feels like this is the first big test of our parenting values. It's hard to find the balance between valuing what your child has done and making too big of a deal out of it. I mean, sure, I think this stuff is cute, but it's clearly not anything special in the grand scheme of things. At the same time I want to celebrate the fact that she's doing it and encourage her to keep doing it. I also realize that absolutely none of this matters now because she won't remember it; I see it more as practice for the future. I don't want her to be one of those kids that thinks everything they do is special and give her a false sense of superiority. At the same time I don't want to 'squelch her spirit' (a quote from Parenthood, one of the best shows on TV) and make her feel like I don't appreciate her work. I'm not exactly sure what I'm trying to say here. So I'll end with a quote from Oscar Wilde: A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. I have a feeling with Lily and my 'unique temperaments' we will be making great works of art together for a long while.