Freedom of expression, man. That is what this country is founded on, and I believe in it. That is why I hand my children blank paper and a massive box of crayons or paint. Oh, they have a few coloring books with pretty pictures- but my kids tend to disregard the art that is already there and they work around or over it. I want them to create something for them. They can draw anything they want - no rules, no limits, no cookie cutter required. I believe that art doesn’t have rules and limits- you can use any mixture of medias that you feel like and staying in the lines- totally unnecessary and frankly, stifling. I give my kids art supplies and say, “Make something.” I don’t say “color me a cat.” I say, ‘Draw how you feel”- and they do. I see monsters and rainbows and flowers and self portraits. I have never told my children to stay in the lines. It feels wrong.
Enter Kindergarten: the first step in creating a lovely, uniform, homogenize the creativity right out of them world.
Jonas is in trouble because he scribbles the coloring sheets. He does this ( I assume)
A: because it’s depressingly mundane to use one color crayon on an entire sheet. My children are color nuts- the more shades available, the better. If every picture on the page is meant to be colored with one color- why make the distinction between white space and not? Why not just do a flood fill of the entire page?
B: He’s in a hurry. Coloring a single page with one crayon isn’t particularly engaging, so he rushes to get on to the next thing.
Today his teacher made him color the same page 3 times. The last one you can see that he is still scribbling pretty fast, but he has finally made the three blue objects into three distinct blue blobs. This earned a star. He got a star because it’s boring and “correct”. It’s KILLING me.
Yes, I totally understand that he is five and that it is advisable to learn the rules before you break them. I get that learning to color in the lines increases his motor ability to hold a pencil and thereby helps him learn to write. I see the value in all of this- it just beats against my soul.
We got home from school and I printed out online coloring pages. I explained the coloring in neat little circles method of crayon use and explained that when the picture is already on the page, we try to stay in the lines, but when we have a blank paper- we can do whatever we want. I felt like a traitor.
Now, were it me presented with a coloring page, I would probably start thinking about glueing little Q-tip horns on Dora or Big Bird and consider what a coating of shellac could add and what I could use this inane picture to say- but Jonas is five. He is not me.
Why do I feel so assaulted? His teacher tells me he was shoving and I’m totally with her on stopping that. This is in no way a “I think my little prince is perfect” thing. I know he’s got a lot of learning to do and I know first hand that he has mastered being a little stinker. So why am I so ruffled? Why do I feel like I’m helping someone squash the creativity right out of him? And why do I worry that is even possible? Can art be squashed? I suppose, so- but really - if it is in you to express yourself artistically- you will do it. You will paint on cave walls or sing arias herding sheep, I have come to find that most of the creative people I have met can’t help it, it kind of oozes from their pores like incandescent light demanding to be seen.
What can I do to help his classroom have an art program? How can I deal with this productively? Do I even have the energy to do anything? Am I just totally insane?
Posted by Lou on August 31, 2007 @ 11:31 am | 10 Comments
Today I was on my hands and knees scrubbing kitchen floor while a friend was over scrapping on my dining room table. My husband walked in:
L: I’d like to be scrapbooking but my house is too filthy.
C: Poor Cinderella.
L: Yeah, except Cinderella had all those birds and mice doing the work.
C: Don’t know what she had to complain about with half the animal kingdom helping out.
Posted by Lou on August 25, 2007 @ 4:14 pm | 6 Comments
Filed in: Me
A few days ago Chris decided to tackle the not so small problem of a missing $1,000 tax return that the State of Utah had not yet decided to mail or deposit into our account. When Chris was deployed I took care of all of the tax issues, and I must say the federal return came speedily and was eaten up in an instant by my greedy bills. Nevertheless, I was pleased at my efficiency. The State taxes were completed at the base tax center and I was told by the pimply nineteen year old tax kid that he couldn’t e-file to Utah so I would have to mail in the paperwork. He told me what to mail, I went home, hauled out the envelopes and stamps and sent it off.
When the return hadn’t arrived before Chris arrived home, we decided something must be up, but in the chaos of everyday life, my ridiculous health failings, Chris applying to college and various other stressors, it hit the back burner with the pitiful hope of, “well, maybe it will show up.”
Finally, a few days ago, Chris decided the time had come to investigate, and upon calling Utah the informed us that, why, yes, they had received our taxes, but hadn’t sent the return because they only had one of the papers and apparently, they needed two. So, I only sent in half the taxes. In my defense I did what the little tax dude said to do. In his defense, he was very confuzzled by the whole “Utah” thing. Who lives there anyway, right?
At any rate, it boiled down to the fact that I now needed to present Chris with a copy of our taxes. This involves me retaining where I put them six months ago, so you can pretty much give up hope here, people, because the babies stole my brain and I can hardly recall what I did six minutes ago, let alone six months!
Well, I made a good effort of it. I checked our tiny little file box that on a good day has our birth certificates and car registration paperwork in it, and which ALWAYS has the ten million warranties that came with our various wedding gifts, and which are now, after six years, probably defunct. Oh, but they have such good memories behind them! Look at the one for the teeny tiny crockpot that was soooooo cute until I realized that I only knew how to cook for an army of ten people.
After searching that, I approached the abyss that is my husband’s desk out in the garage. Then I searched the various Rubbermaid containers that I bought with the idea of Organized Storage in mind, and which my husband decided to use as a dumping ground for all wires and paperwork he didn’t have time to deal with ( I think this started when the stacks on the desk topped into a halfway open container and he just kinda “went with it”.
I searched my desk even though I knew for a fact that it couldn’t be there since I’ve reorganized and cleaned MY desk off recently. ( I shoved all excess disks and papers onto Chris’ desk, cause people, you can’t even tell the difference! And now I only have the past five meals’ worth of dishes and some cat beds on mine!)
I then went through the drawer where I stashed the dental insurance cards and my Petco card (tucked ever so gently by an almost completed sewing project that brings me guilt every time I open that darn drawer searching for a needle.) No such luck in there. I actually began to question myself, “Did I even make copies of the taxes? It seems like the logical thing to do. . .” Fully realizing that “my thought processes” and the word “logical” don’t really belong in the same sentence, I abandoned all hope.
Finally, it dawned on me that I never checked the little organizer that sits by our phone and gets doused every time the dishwasher regurgitates it’s dirty water into the sink and it over flows the weird spigot thing by the faucet. This organizer is supposed to be the kind of thing in which you plop the days’ mail and an address book as a stop-gap measure between the table and the recycling bin, but at our house it has become a catch all for anything flat and cluttering up a household surface. It is in this mess of papers that I found the taxes and made my husband very, very happy.
Why am I telling you all this? Because Jessica over at Kerflop is giving away a JOYS organizational system, and clearly, it would bring me great joy to actually have a filing system that works for me- as opposed to a filing non system that makes me so ticked off I occasional circular file important documents. In order to win said filing system, I gotta write an essay on what brings me joy. As you can see, this essay on how utterly disorganized I am probably doesn’t qualify. ( I usually prefer the terms “creative and artistic”as gentler, kinder euphemisms- but we’re being real here, so disorganized it is).
So, off to think of something joyful.
Posted by Lou on August 17, 2007 @ 2:03 pm | 7 Comments
Maggie ripped up my scriptures the other day when she was supposed to be napping.
It must be noted that i don’t just read my scriptures the way some do. I pour over them , marking and making little notations in the sidebars and color coding scriptures that have given me particular guidance and uplift during different periods of my life (Texas was green, California was blue). It’s not a matter of just go buy a new set- I’ve lost years of inspiration and study, and after much searching online I discovered that they don’t even make the same binding style I love- so- literally, they are irreplaceable.
It took Chris and I about two hours to tape back together the various pieces of confetti into recognizable pages, and even longer to attempt to adhere them back into the binding. I now have a totally removable Moroni, and a few pages have more tape than paper. There are some verses I may never read again. If I commit any major sins, I’m blaming her.
Posted by Lou on @ 1:21 pm | 3 Comments
A few days ago Chris graduated his honor guard training. Part of the graduation ceremony included a run through of an average retiree funeral. Now, I have seen a military funeral before. My grandfather was a WWII veteran, and he had military respects paid at his interment that were very moving. However, watching what my husband will be doing on a daily basis for the next year was profoundly touching.
It is likely that he will serve at over 700 funerals in the next year. Most of those will be retiree funerals and prior service members who have lived long, full lives with service to their country. Sadly, it is inevitable that a few of the funerals will be for the men and women currently serving in the Global War on Terror. It is made even more significant to me when I watch it and know that someday both my father’s and my husband’s funerals will include these honors.
An honor guard functions on precision and perfection. Every movement is an exercise in exactitude. Its execution must be flawless and performed with dignity and respect. The honor guard member’s bearing is steeled in the reverence of the duty that they are performing; no tear is shed, no posture ever slumped, no movement ever performed with anything less than planned deliberation. It is the ultimate showing of gratitude for the decedent’s valor and heroism, and it is absolutely beautiful to watch.
I have a feeling that the next year is going to be a changing one. Chris will be faced with much death, and much perspective and that will trickle down to our family. It is more difficult to gripe about a last minute change in my plans when I know that there is likely a grieving family behind it. It has been interesting thus far to watch my husband prepare his uniform for these details. While any military uniform is kept pristine, there is a new level of attention to detail present as he prepares to give these honors.
I am very pleased that he has been appointed to this special duty assignment. I think that what he gives of himself in this capacity is crucial to patriotism and national honor. I have always been proud of my husband’s service to our country, and proud of him as a good husband and father, but in watching him in this capacity, I am so very moved.
Posted by Lou on August 15, 2007 @ 5:01 pm | 6 Comments
We just found out today what school Jonas will be going to (It’s the one we are assigned to, but in CA- you never can tell).
We find out if he is in am or pm Kindergarten about 36 hours before school starts ( you know, give or take 4 hours *eyeroll*) We find out who his teacher is at the same time.
They gave us a school supply list too- aside from the hand santizer and Kleenex, we were required no less than a pack of markers and colored pencils and two 8 packs and one 64 pack of crayons. My mom wanted to buy his stuff for him and mail it to him, and when she saw the 64 pack on the list she immediately assumed that I had thrown that in there because I like crayons so much. . .I reassured her that were it me, I would have asked for the whole 96 and a Precious Moment’s coloring book to boot ha!
You’ll never guess what arrived for me in the box with Jonas school supplies. . .the 96 pack of crayons (with the built in sharpener) had a note suggesting that Mommy share, (but Mo-om, when I shared with Maggie she thought it was funny to snap five whole crayons in half and they were GOOD colors too! Like Purple mountain Majesty and Razz-Ma-Tazz and Lemon cause I cared enough to share the very best! Learned my lesson, two year olds can only be trusted with second hand crayons. . .)
Jonas was so thrilled with his new backpack and school stuff that he took it to bed, gleefully snuggled up to a ream of computer paper and sixty-five glue sticks, dreaming of the day when he can finally ditch mom and head off to school.
Some mothers are apprehensive and sad the first day of Kindergarten. I, on the other hand, have a child who from the moment he was old enough to lift up his own head and push away from my body, he did. Jonas has always had things to do, and I have always been nothing but a hindrance. He is going to go learn. He is going to go navigate being Jonas on his own. I fully expect this to be rocky for him because he is so energetic and stubborn and just plain feisty- but he is going to grow. I just pray he has a teacher with a sense of humor and the patience of Job.
Posted by Lou on August 11, 2007 @ 11:04 pm | 5 Comments
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