Iveyrock

I have written a lot about our art projects, and I think it would be easy to get the impression that we only do art all day. While it is true that we do a good bit – at least something every day, some days much more – it isn’t the only thing we do around here. As school is starting up again, and I have been thinking about preschool, I have come back again to my main goals for my family.

I have several priorities for our time, access to art supplies being one of them. But even above the specific goals that I have, my over arching desire is that my kids have free time.

I want my kids to have time to just be kids. I feel like above almost anything else, this is a gift that they can never have again. Although there is a lot of pressure to teach kids very early, I am not worried that a lack of direct “teaching” at three or four will be an obstacle for my children later in life. When they are thirty, they will have learned to read, do basic math, tie their shoes. What I want for them right now is what they can never have at thirty – time to just be four. Time to just be two.

I want my kids to play in the backyard every day. I want them to get dirty. I want them to find out what happens when they fill that hole up with water. (A toad pops out! Who knew? We’ve been wondering what that hole was all year.) I want to be able to do art projects that get messy. I want time to say, “sure, we can read that book. And that one too.” I want them to use their muscles, and their senses, and their brains. I want them to invent and investigate. I want them to get bored, and find ways to fill up the boredom. I want them to learn that life is hard, but it is good, and it is worth living.

And writing it all down, it seems so straightforward. But the truth is, it’s hard. There are so many ways that our days get filled up with stuff. There are so many things that are good to do, that can very quickly add up, until there is no down time. It is sometimes hard to trust that my children won’t loose out because I am not sitting them down to teach them their letters or numbers. I know that my kids spend their time differently than some others their age, and it’s sometimes hard to believe that I am not holding them back.

But then I watch our days together, and I am again struck by the magic of just being a kid. I see how much they sink into their play, and how much they learn from it. As an adult, I fight for every minute that I am truly just living. I treasure their ability to be in the moment, and I want to protect it.

Today has been quite a day. We have run the gambit of emotions in this house, from completely silly to complete meltdown; many times. At the end of the day, I am left thinking again about what a strange life being a stay-at-home mom is.

One of the things that I find so unique about this job, is that there is no one in this house with me as I parent. I am here by myself almost every day, and I answer only to people under the age of five. (I am relatively sure their standards of acceptable behavior are different than typical jobs require.)

Every aspect of my day is my own. The times I lost my temper, and said words I regreted even as I was saying them. No one else heard me, no one else was here to reign me in. There is no one here to spell me off, to tell me to take a break, to tell me to shape up or get out. I am responsible for stopping myself. (I walked away; called my husband, called my mom)

There is no one here to see my best moments. The times I’m exhausted, and my head hurts, and someone needs one more thing. The times I do not loose my temper. The times I choose to be silly and break the mood. The times I find just enough energy to change the dynamic. I don’t get paid, I don’t get promoted, I don’t get a review or feedback. I do get children who want to show me what they are learning, who want me to laugh with them, who want me to be a part of their world.

And then there are the thousands of silly, magical, or just ordinary moments that make up our days. No one is here to laugh at my daughter’s two-year-old logic. No one sees how cute the baby was, when he was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe. No one saw my son give his never-been-opened crayons to his baby sister, without batting an eyelash.

So many of the funniest moments aren’t anything that can be shared, because you just have to be here. And the moments where everything just falls into places – my favorite little times of the day – are just so comfortable and beautiful because they are my family, my house, my hard work.

I love being a mom, but it is a strange, hard job.

One of the things that is highly entertaining and occasionally frustrating about raising my kids is; they do not use anything for its intended purpose.

Toys that are extremely limited in their use get turned into all kinds of things. One of Chava’s favorite ‘babies’ is a broom. Ian often makes “contraptions”, which can be made of pretty much anything, for pretty much anything. Their art projects go the same way; whatever I thought they were doing, it very quickly turns into something else. And then something else again.

The success of the project, or game, or day really hinges on whether I stick to my idea of what should be happening, or let the kids go and do their own thing. When we tried to make macaroni necklaces, I was irritated that they didn’t want to actually string the macaroni. Why? Because I wanted them to experience a different craft than we had done before, have some fun, use their creativity. But I wanted them to do it the right way. The way that ends in necklaces, not the way that ends in noodles buried in the sandbox.

Why does it matter? They didn’t care about the necklaces. They had fun digging up the noodles. They got to play outside, they were entertained.

At this point, when we get a new toy or start a new project, I expect it to turn out completely differently than intended. The funny thing is, no matter how much I know this, I still can’t predict what it is they will actually do. Life is continually interesting in this house.

We do a lot of art around here, but for the last couple of months that has been a bit on the back burner, as we’ve been spending as much time as we can outside. Now that it’s getting too hot to play (the high today was 105), the kids are suddenly asking for “projects” again.

It’s been really neat to watch them the last week or so. Both of them are suddenly doing more with their creativity than they were before.

Ian hasn’t really been into drawing ‘things’ at all; he likes to just put colors on the paper. I’ve been struggling with whether I should introduce the idea of drawings that actually represent something, or just let him come up with it on his own. We’ve talked about drawing shapes and people before, but it’s just not something he’s been interested in. But this past week, he sat down and drew a really neat picture.

Ian’s ‘Superman’

Chava’s ‘Lizard’

It was especially fun to listen to him talk to himself about what he was doing. He put in “Superman”, and then decided that he needed Night and Day. He mumbled to himself about needing a black crayon and a blue crayon for that. Then he added a circle around the whole thing, and some “bad guys”, and some “things to fight the bad guys”. (Which leaves me a little confused, because to the best of my knowledge, he’s never seen Superman in his life. Maybe it’s genetic.)

Both of my kids are really into art that is more three dimensional. Which might be why Ian ripped up his really cool picture that I had planned to save forever, as part of the project. Luckily, I had taken pictures.

There’s been a change in their three dimensional art, as well. They are much more deliberate about what they are doing. Ian especially is trying to recreate something he sees in his mind, rather than just put things together and see what happens. He’s also been much more specific about what he wants. Instead of asking to paint, he’ll ask if he can make a mouse, and cut it out, and glue it to a Popsicle stick, and make it into a puppet.

The funny thing about their projects is the way they turn into so many other things along the way. Ian’s mouse became a frog on a lily pad, and then some smaller frogs, and then a bunch of itty bitty pieces of paper. Because really, it is still very much about the process for them. I don’t consider myself to be artistic at all, so I haven’t given much thought to how art works. But it makes sense to me that there is so much ‘process’ behind the finished product. I would think any artist puts that much thought into their work, and that their work goes through just as many stages and metamorphoses before they are satisfied. I would guess there are many times with the end result is no where near what they originally envisioned.

I am still adjusting a little bit to this new way of doing things. Before they would ask for paint, and I’d hand them paint. Now Ian wants to make something that is real to him. So I ask “what do you need for that?” His answers surprise me, and I am so intrigued by the way his mind puts things together. It’s also fun to watch them with more materials. They come up with things I wouldn’t have dreamed of putting together. My job is to give them what they ask for, and stay out of the way.

A couple of weeks ago, I happened to come across this post on the Simplekids website. I filed it away as a good idea for getting us out of a downward spiral – which obligingly started up about ten minutes after I saw the idea. When I could see that things where going to keep going downhill, I said, “Hey, I know what’s wrong! You don’t have any faces on your feet! Let me fix that for you!” They thought it was great, especially since I hadn’t yet  lifted the ban on body art. It got us right out of our funk, and they kids loved telling Daddy about it that night.

I thought it was fun, but didn’t think too much more about it. However, it’s apparently taken on a life of it’s own. We’ve done it two more times, and each time it’s helped. The thing that is really neat, though, is that it’s been Ian’s idea. Both times he was getting more and more ’stuck’. Today he and Chava were bickering, and he was upset. I was thinking of ways to end the dynamic, all of which involved separating the kids. I was just about to announce an early quiet time, when Ian asked “Can I have faces?”

It’s really fun to see him coming up with positive ways to get us all unstuck and moving on with our day. I am proud of him for wanting to work his way out of his mood, and for coming up with an idea to do it.

Today the kids requested faces on their faces as well. Then they wanted a face on MY face. They thought it was hilarous. I forgot about it, until I’d talked to a couple of my neighbors with green marker all over my face.