Arts, Crafts and Colonel Kurtz.....

Since Josh has been born we've had a lot more time in the house than usual this summer. So, a couple weeks into his life Lucy, Josh and I hit the craft store to buy some art supplies. I thought "art projects" would be a great way to pass the time indoors. We loaded up on paint, markers, feathers, pom poms's, glue, stamps - you name it, we bought it. As much as it was "art projects" it was more like "new mother desperate to compensate for spending lots of time and attention on the new baby projects." Everyday I would try to spend some one-on-one time with Lucy working on a project. Now the combination of new baby, a two year old and a grown woman almost incapable of anyting craft-related was not quite the dream team - but I was going to make it work.

One afternoon when there was a brief lull in the throes of Josh's newborn fussiness I embarked on an art project to give Lucy and I some special Mom and Lucy time. I got out macaroni, twine, paint, paper....it was a production. Sleep deprived and feeling guilty that Lucy was watching more TV than I'd care to admit, I set out to have some quality time damnit....We started with the macaroni necklaces. As I tried to teach Lucy to string the dried pasta onto the necklace she mostly ignored me, tried to eat the pasta and then crunched it into a million bits when it fell to the floor. Josh was still sleeping so I strung the macaroni while Lucy made a mess and then moved onto stage two of the project - painting. I laid out the paint, gave a lesson on how to paint each stupid noodle and waited for Lucy to obidently and neatly follow my instruction. Instead, she mostly rubbed the paint on her hands like lotion. When I had to leave for a minute to tend to the waking fuss-bucket she painted her arms and stomach. She was very pleased with herself and when I returned to see it she proudly told me she painted her tummy. As she continued to camouflage herself like Martin Sheen in Apocolypse Now, Josh lit up like fireworks on fourth of July. As I placed him on a blanket to wail away, I got Lucy out of her chair and into the tub leaving a trail of fingerpaint handprints behind.

Eventually she got clean, he got fed. I learned that eventually we'd all get the hang of it and if it was going to work it would have to be real fun and not "forced fun" for our art projects together.