Releasing Her Inner Artist

I have been putting off writing about our summer. I have a post in me somewhere, but I think I had to let school start for a week or so before I could rehash the summer. Or perhaps it is taking me that long to restart my brain after it was left unplugged (intentionally, as a form of self protection) all summer. So in order to ease into my summer post (and this is NOT my summer post), I'll tell you a little about Natalie's artistic phases over the summer. The pictures don't capture the entire essence, because I only grabbed handfuls of the art produced.

There was the rock painting phase. Piles of brightly painted, markered, and crayoned rocks, mostly pilfered from neighbor's landscaping.

The bookmark phase. She found a bag of tongue depressor sticks in our craft bag. And proceeded to paint, marker and draw on pretty close to the entire bag. She began giving them out as bookmarks, but we still have a stack of them.

The paper plate phase. She found a stack of paper plates in the pantry. The ones that I bought to use for lunches on days when the dishes are stacking up....and proceeded to paint, draw, color and cut pretty close to all of them.

The Post-It Note phase. An entire stack of Post-It Notes now have cryptic notes on every page. I particularly like the one that is taped at eye level on the door to my toilet (eye level while sitting on the commode, that is) that says "I♥ my kids."

The Label Maker phase. She is into trying to spell things, with or without my help, and used pretty much a whole tape in my Label Maker...for Owen "I like Power Rangers" and "underwear." There was the "I love" series - "I love Liam" and "I love Owen" and on and on. And my personal favorite, "OK sooooooo" and "OK so haw are you."

I could have chosen to be upset about the use of so many sticks, plates, paper, labels. But really, considering how things deteriorate around here when children aren't kept busy, I didn't mind at all. My little artist brightens our world with color. And she keeps herself busy with very little supervision required. Excellent.

The harder part will be the ultimate disposal of said art...some things (rocks) are not as easy to slip into the recycle basket as others...