MOXIE MOM on Life & Kids
My Crafters
Last night, a fellow Girl Scout parent and I hosted a “Girls Night Out” event for kids who are already in Girl Scouts or who are interested in becoming a Girl Scout. You have to provide a craft or two, as well as a couple games. This kind of thing is not my forte—that craft thing, remember? (See My Crafty Daughter.) But the event went fine with the help of several girls from our troop. It was even kind of fun.
When we brought the leftover craft supplies home—supplies to make chocolate kiss rosebuds—Ty wanted to know how our evening had gone and what we had done.
“We made chocolate kiss rosebuds. Want to make one?” I said.
“Yeah!”
So I showed him how to make one, giving him instructions as he put the thing together.
“Daddy,” he called to Curt in the other room, “Come here. I want to show you how to make a rosebud.” So Curt dutifully appeared and sat down to learn how to make a chocolate rosebud. My boys working on a Girl Scout craft.
Ty began explaining: “So you stick the two kisses together, bottom to bottom, with this double-sided tape, and then you stick a skewer into the tip of one kiss, and then you wrap the cellophane around the kisses by putting the tip of the kiss exactly in the middle of the cellophane so it wraps evenly…”
His instructions were impeccable.
“Wow, Ty, you were really listening,” I said. He smiled at me. And a thought began to dawn on me.
“Do you like crafts, Ty?”
“I love them.”
Well, crap. How did I manage to birth two crafters?
leave a comment!My Crafty Daughter
Sometimes I wonder if my daughter wishes she’d been born to a different mom—the kind of mom who initiates crafts with her kids, maybe researches them on-line, subscribes to craft magazines, and actually buys craft supplies. Although I’ve been known to take Leah to Michael’s, I’m the kind of person who would rather send her kids outside to find available sticks and rocks. Or accompany them to the park to play baseball. Or read. To my kids or to myself—I’m happy either way.
Leah is a good reader, but the fact that she would rather do something else continues to astonish me. Actually, what astonishes me is that she’s become quite a capable crafter—I would go so far as to say “fiber artist”— in spite of her mother (I sometimes think of her as my mini Martha Stewart). Testament to the reality that your child will develop talents and passions not your own. Also that you don’t even have to offer up the experience because if they care enough, they will find a way. (And isn’t that a load off?)
Leah recently took up knitting, courtesy of a same-aged friend who taught her, and completed in a week or so a washcloth for her grandma’s birthday. No dropped stitches, not a one. I do not knit, but you knew that already. I had never even handled knitting needles until I put them in the shopping cart for Leah. That was when I learned they came in different sizes. She had to have knitting needles, because knitting, it seems, is hip with ten-year-olds—and how can I argue with buying them for her because really, it’s so cool she can knit. The fifth-grade crew at her school are into it—not all of them, but on any given day I hear stories about who’s working on what project. They gather together at school at various appropriate times and places, lunch time and such, to knit and chat, and they’ve even started a yarn exchange. Me, I would have been out playing baseball with the boys.
But this is how I know my daughter is a crafter at heart. She spent an entire afternoon painting designs on jars with puffy paint, every jar in the house, I believe. She hummed the entire time, and I knew from her humming she was in a zone. A more typical day includes barking at her brother, bugging her parents to take her to some place on her personal agenda (CreativiTea in Fairhaven is high on her list), or calling friends to play. She’s an on-the-move kind of kid, not someone I would call quiet or reflective, but when she’s crafting, she’s calm, centered, at peace with the world. It’s a Zen thing for her, and I love seeing her in this place.
I’m also glad I don’t have to do it with her, and she doesn’t seem to mind.
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