Junior completed a craft yesterday.
I know I joke about not being crafty, and that is true - you will never see me re-purpose a milk jug into a party light or, I don't know, create a self-sustaining bird feeder out of gum wrappers and acorns, but when it comes to kids' arts and crafts? Well, not to brag or anything, but let's just say I do know my way around a pipe cleaner.
When I worked at the Boys and Girls Club, I ran the summer art program, and was fully capable of getting 30 children quietly engrossed in making butterflies out of coffee filters and clothespins. And I draw in a way that is pleasing to children - cartoonish people and happy animals with big eyes; a few steps above stick creations but quite a few below actual talent, but still, kids are usually impressed and clamor for princesses riding on giraffes and dinosaurs, and I was always happy to comply.
When I had my son, long before he even knew he actually had hands, I was signed up on crayola.com (great resource, by the way), stocking up on modeling clay and paints, planning all the kick-ass stuff I - uh, I mean we - would do together when he finally got that whole fine and gross motor control stuff under his belt.
We started young, and, like most babies, Junior was usually done with the idea of a craft before I even finished carefully taping a garbage bag to the kitchen table and setting out the supplies in what I thought was an engaging manner. "No fanks," he would say. "Car-cars." And so it would all get put back up and we would play car-cars instead.
And then we had a brief foray into the world of employment - at a daycare. So I took him with me, and he would do "crafts" with his class, and no one ever had to put his name on it, because his was always the one with several bites taken out of it. For a child who turned his nose up at almost everything edible, he had no problem with eating paper plates and crayons. At home, it was the same, even as he got older and presumably should have been able to grasp the difference between things like food and paper, and why one is okay to eat, and the other is not.
Give him construction paper, fuzzy balls, glue and scissors, and...nothing. He might chew on the paper. Perhaps lick the glue. Turn the scissors into a vacuum. Craft time turns into this:
"Honey, we don't eat paper. Buddy, glue is not for our tummies. Justin. Justin, Junior - we don't eat crayons. Look. Look at how Mommy does it. Buddy, look at how Mommy does it. Like this, baby. No, that doesn't go in our mouths. Honey, look - oh, wait. Paste is not 'so dewicious.' Look, sweethearts. Spit it out. Spit it out. Oh for the love of God, son, QUIT EATING THE CRAFT!"
But still, I have persisted. He got older, I got wiser - kept things simpler. "Let's color," I would say, grab the crayons and the big pad of paper, and sit down with him. I would draw, I don't know, a happy cat drinking milk or something...then patiently show him how he could draw one with just a few circles and a couple of triangles. He had no interest, and he was not impressed. "Draw an outlet, Mom," he would request. "A vacuum. A lamp. Draw it so it's plugged in." And so craft time became an exercise in which I drew various appliances for him, and he would add the cords.
Boring.
It isn't that he isn't creative, because he is - the other day, for example, he built a "doomsday device" (anyone familiar with Three Pigs and a Baby will understand), using an old box fan, the body of a canister vacuum, roller skates and duct tape. He'll build a kitchen using his mega blocks, convert his tool bench into an office where he will happily pound away on the calculator he uses as a keyboard and inform me that he is "writing my blog" or that he is "googling vacuums for China" or any number of funny, creative things. Give him boxes, tape, string, blocks and he will impress the hell out of me, every time.
But crafts? No. Just no. And so I have quietly and, with a small pang of sorrow, put away the glue, the felt cut-outs, the pipe cleaners, and instead keep him supplied with an ever-growing collection of mega blocks, tape, old parts and yarn, and let him create in his own fashion.
Yet, a few weeks ago, I happened to see a craft that was different...and priced at $1, which fit right into my budget and also guaranteed that when it probably failed, I would be able to shrug it off. It was a 3D foam mosaic turtle - basically, a half of a dome with a series of tiny, tiny little foam squares that needed to be peeled off their adhesive backing, then stuck to the dome, with a few polka-dots for variety, and googly eyes. I am a sucker for googly eyes.
Yesterday, with the snow and bitter cold, desperate for something to do that we hadn't already done 24 times, I seized upon the turtle. "Wanna do this?" I asked.
He eyed it with suspicion at first. I handed him the box. He inspected it closer, turning it over in his hands, shaking the box. "I think...I think I am so excited to make this turtle," he said.
We sat down. We spent an hour making this turtle. I carefully peeled each one of the 3,987 tiny squares off of their backing, and he, with studious attention, carefully placed each one. We affixed googly eyes. We scattered foam polka dots across the shell. He didn't try to eat any of it. He was enthusiastic. "I'm going to name him Trinko Coco. I am so excited to love this turtle, Mom," he said. And I got to say things like, "Turtle starts with the letter T. What other words start with the letter T, I wonder" instead of "SPIT THAT OUT!"
It was awesome.
Finally, he announced that Trinko Coco was complete. That Trinko Coco and turtle both started with the letter T. That he loved styrofoam, especially if it was green. That next time, he would be so excited to make an elephant with the styrofoam.
And then he shoved the damned thing down the back of his underpants and declared, "I poop turtles."
And because I have learned the repetitive lesson that parenting in actuality is so different than what I ever expected, and much of what I do is re-visionary and reactionary, I was simply grateful that he hadn't eaten the turtle and, in actual reality, pooped it out.
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