Let me just set the record straight. I don’t do arts and crafts, despite what the Scholastic website would have you believe. You all know how I’ve suffered for my art in the past. I thought that with the girls going to school, I might be able to get off the hook with having to drag out the box of glue sticks, pipe cleaner’s, finger paints and googly eyes. Yeah, so much for that.
On Friday at school, Co was sent home with a large construction paper turkey feather Accompanying instructions said to ask your child what she is thankful for and provide a pictorial display as well. I figured this would be a good activity for me and the girls on Saturday afternoon.
Mo, Co, and I sat around the table, crayons and paper in reach and got down to business. I asked Co what she was thankful for and she said “My mommy and my daddy and my Morgan and my me and my mommy and my daddy and my Morgan and my me and. . .”
Mo said, “Um. . .turkey, green beans, rice, carrots, lettuce, potatoes, and walnuts.” All of this from the child that only eats Chinese chicken and broccoli and chicken nuggets?
We select some pictures for Co to glue onto her feather and Mo is busy working away on cutting out pictures from a magazine.
So far, so good, but by now I should be able to recognize the calm before the storm. In a matter of minutes, the grabby-hands come out. Snatching of colored pencils begins, pencil shavings are dumped on the floor, a glue stick is being used as chapstick (though in hindsight that probably wasn’t a bad idea). Co is using rubber stamps and the stamp pad to decorate her face. Mo is yelling out orders to me on how to clothe her paperdolls.
“I want tights!”
“I want shoes!”
“I want different shoes!”
“The dress needs peplums!” (What is this? Project Runway?)
“This isn’t how Daddy does it!”
And wham-o! Mo is dissolving into a toddler sized puddle of snot and tears. She’s upset because Co won’t share the scissors. She’s upset because she can’t find a black crayon. She’s upset because she needs a new brown paper bag with which to make a paper doll because there’s the faintest trace of yellow crayon on the bag she has. She’s upset because Mommy has no idea how make ballerina princess paper dolls like Daddy. She’s upset because the moon is not in the seventh house and Jupiter is misaligned with Mars.
Her eyes fill with tears the way a glass fills with water. When she closes her eyes and opens her mouth to cry, those tears ping out of her face with surprising velocity.
I implore her to calm down. I beg her to stop crying. I tell her that I can’t help her when she’s so upset. My Greek chorus of one (a.k.a Co), says, “I’m calm down. I’m not crying. I’m not upset” which is like squeezing a can of lighter fluid onto a bonfire. Thanks, Co.
My patience for this entire project evaporated the minute I brought that construction paper turkey feather home on Friday so you can imagine the Herculean strength it is taking me to keep it together. I reach back into my Mommy arsenal desperately groping for some type of something to diffuse the situation. Hugs! Of course!
“Mo, come get a hug!”
She hiccups herself over to my lap and wipes her nose ofn my shirt. I wrap my arms around her, pushing scraps of paper off to the side, opting to forgo chastising Co as she rouges her cheeks with an inked-up rubber stamp — it’s non-toxic and I’ve got Lever 2000. When we’ve cooled our jets for a while, I ask Mo if she’s alright and she mumbles something into my chest.
“What was that, sweetheart?”
She lifts her head, her eyes round and glassy, and she says, “My dress needs puffy sleeves, too.”
Right, of course it does.
