One Man's Trash...

Why, you may ask, am I showing you a pile of our recycling? Oh no, sir or madam, this is the contents of ONE DAY'S WORTH of art that DaVinci did at school today... ONE 6 HOUR PERIOD, in which I am assuming she also ate, had circle time and a couple of recesses. Most of these objects, I was informed, are "boats that really float!" Boats that in a former life were tape dispensers, glue stick boxes, coffee lids, toilet paper rolls, etc, etc, etc. I am all for re-use but it feels like these days we are just ending up with all these reused items that then become our burden to dispose of. Both of my kids are virtually dumpster divers for art supplies - today I put a throat lozenge in my mouth and Little D immediately grabbed the wrapper and said "I could make art with this!" On the one hand, there is no need to spend money on art supplies and the trash gets a second use, but then on the other hand it becomes art that is actually a piece of paper with a plastic cough drop wrapper taped to it which just means more time for me to dispose of it properly.

The whole process of dismantling DaVinci's art is very difficult for me. What is the proper length of time to keep said "art?" Often her work is three dimensional, so storage is difficult, and scanning is out of the question. She seems to like the process of creation, and then is very excited to show us her work and talk about it, but never seems to care about it after that. Mostly I recycle all the worksheets and such the day it comes home, but I am always nervous that she is going to say "Where are all my amazing boats?" and I will have to tell her that they looked more like trash than boats. We started a bin above the art supplies that we try to put art work in for a holding period just in case one of the kids ask about a recent work. That seems to fill up in a day or two. We also have a bag in the closet of "keepers" that we would like to scan and preserve... you know... the next (first) time the scanning bug hits us. It is overall way more than our little old house has room for.

I know, this is no major problem, and I don't honestly spend much of my day worrying about it. But hey, please give us a break the next time you visit and it looks like a recycling station at my house.

In unrelated news, I was SUPER sick last night and this morning with a cold and felt perfectly awful. It was amazing to see how well little D rallied when it was supposed to be a "Mama and D day" (a day which does indeed come with a theme song) and instead of needing my attention every 3 minutes, he played quietly by himself all morning. This allowed me to doze on the couch until about 10:30 (unheard of in the past) at which time I woke up feeling quite a bit better. Yay for the kids getting bigger and better all the time!

DaVinci as a 6 year-old

One of my close friends Sarah started a daily blog 6 months ago where she posts one photo, every day, and with it a little something about the day. This means that on Christmas, she had to pick one picture to describe a whirlwind of activity which is quite a feat. But more meaningful to me are the days in which they live their regular lives and nothing out of the ordinary happens. Then we get to see the stuff that makes up their lives, the minutiae that makes up a family of four. I love her blog, and the complete picture she is able to capture by posting every day.

This is what I am attempting to create for myself: a memory bank of small moments. The lives that we live as a family right now with a 3 year old, a 6 year old, a pup, 2 cats and 2 chickens in an AMAZING city with wonderful family and friends close at hand is not the life we will live forever. Time with kids passes so quickly, and they are changing every day. I want to remember the funny things they say, the things they do that drive me crazy, the library trips, the awesome evenings that are a family bike trip to Hopworks (which we call HUB-O for a complicated set of reasons).

So let us begin with the moment captured above: my darling daughter. We gave her the middle name DaVinci so she would be inspired by a man who was both an artist and an inventor, and she has grown into this role already. She is constantly possessed by the need to create, to the point where she is incapable of doing anything else before her ideas are on paper.

This morning we are preparing for tonight's New Year's Eve party at our place, to be attended by three other families we have had the honor of being friends with for the last six years. I told DaVinci that perhaps we should have some sort of craft for the kids to do when they got here. We decided on paper lanterns, and DaVinci immediately got to work on a "sample." This was after creating an illustrated shopping list for Z to get groceries with and making a wooden person with a craft kit her Aunt got her for Christmas, all before 10AM.

There are two main downsides of all the creativity. 1) We do not have near enough space to store all the items she creates. 2) Chapped Lips. Like me, her ability to think is directly related to the distance her tongue sticks out of her mouth. No amount of chap stick seems to solve the problem.