Little Things
Everyday things have been sort of overwhelming lately. Things as simple as laundry or dishes or even getting the daughter ready for school wear me out. Maybe it’s the rainy weather. Maybe it’s the struggle of working through back pain. Maybe it’s that I’ve started working out every day in the hopes of strengthening my back. …Maybe I’m just worn out from trying to keep all the plates spinning.
So I’ve been painting more tiny things. I like it because in just a few hours, I get to challenge myself to paint a person in a tiny little area. They don’t always turn out perfectly, but it’s a challenge for me to paint a face I like that small, and see if I can still make it look nice.
I struggle when people tell me who I should paint, because if I don’t have some weird little sense of love for the person (or at least for their face), I have trouble drawing them (not custom work–I find that a fun challenge). Someone suggested an actor that I don’t really care much for, and I didn’t even consider it. I have to WANT to draw it. It has to be fun for me, right?
And right now, they’re fun. They’re a fun little challenge, not too daunting…
And while I do have a few in my etsy shop, I find they’re also really fun to make as gifts. This little piece of artist Mab Graves is on its way to her, as a thank you for a package she just sent. I styled her after the King and Queen of the moon in Gilliam’s Baron Von Munchausen, and tried to make it a good blend of both.
So these tiny things have been helping me through a lack of motivation lately, because in just 2-4 hours, I can finish a tiny little face that might be fun to look at. Not a giant drawing, not an intimidating portrait. Just something simple and small, challenging and fun. I’m not sure why, but lately, that’s good enough for me…
Sometimes it’s the little things that help…you know?
Art and Audiobooks
This past week, the daughter and I visited family for Spring Break, part of which included an 8-hour drive. Myla’s a great traveler, though, and can entertain herself for hours with a sketchbook, animation apps, or just staring out the window, daydreaming. I had never tried her with audiobooks, but since the trip was long and she was tired of her normal car activities, I decided to play for her The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, read by Anne Hathaway.
Anne has a knack for creating interesting voices for all the characters, which Myla enjoyed, and to my surprise, she was riveted, and was hooked right away.
We happily learned that there were a great many differences between the book and the famous movie (of which she’s not really a fan), and was full of so many strange creatures and events that we had never heard of before.
“We should try to DRAW all the characters the way we saw them in our heads!” she excitedly suggested once we got back and settled in at home. It was an incredibly awesome idea (she is 6 years old, and never ceases to have awesome ideas). And it just so happened that my husband (who is deployed) had sent us a little sketchbook that was just waiting to be drawn in…
So we started talking to each other about the characters, and we talked about drawing what was in our minds as we heard the story. We talked about how the author can sort of tell you what they see, but everyone who hears it might have their own picture in their heads. (We also never referenced the movie or the original illustrations from the 1900s, we just drew what we saw in our heads, so that can’t be wrong, no matter how you slice it). So in case you’re worried about spoilers from a book that’s been out since the 1900s, I’m going to tell you a bit now about all the characters we drew:
One of her favorites was near the end, when the adventurers come upon some people they called the Hammer-Heads, who had no arms, but very wrinkly necks, which could shoot out and punch you with their flat heads. And we started to sketch.
We drew them side by side, to compare. I pictured them more as rock people, and she saw them more like little cranky men. In any case, they both definitely had a wicked case of cranky-face.
Next up, we drew the Scarecrow–Myla’s favorite of the travelers. I drew a little doodle on her lunch napkin that day, and when she got home, she sketched her version of the scarecrow being flung by the guard trees in one of the forests. I drew the Scarecrow in a quite disturbing description of how Oz gave him brains–by filling his head up with a lumpy mixture containing pins, which then stuck out of the fabric once his head was back on. They said it made his mind “sharp” (and not at all terrifyingly creepy in the slightest, right?).
We both loved the Tin Woodsman (my favorite), whose story was MUCH more grim than in the movie. In the book, he was a regular man, in love with a Munchkin girl who lived with a mean witch, who enchanted his axe, which made him accidentally keep cutting off his own goshdarn limbs. Luckily, his good buddy the Tinsmith would replace his limbs with tin ones each time, until finally the Tin Woodsman cut off his own head and body with the enchanted axe, and the Tinsmith fashioned him a new one…but it didn’t have a heart, and he no longer was able to feel love, even for the little Munchkin girl….until Oz cut a little square in his chest and put a tiny fabric heart inside, and he finally felt love again. I drew him on her lunch napkin, and then later, holding his axe (with which he chops a GREAT many messy things in the story) and Myla drew him feeling sad, crying over accidentally stepping on an insect.
The Lion seemed to us just like a regular lion, and we talked about how in the movie they kind of made him like a person, standing on two legs. Hers was a little more goofy -faced than mine (since he was quite silly), and mine is drinking the liquid courage (which I assume was probably a shot of whiskey or whatever?) that Oz gave him.
Dorothy was also quite different. Myla saw her as a little blonde-haired girl in a blue dress, and we were both surprised to know that in the book, those famous ruby slippers were not in fact “ruby,” but were SILVER, a-thankyouverymuch, and never ever contained a bit of red. When the house lands and she’s about to take off on her adventure to find the Wizard who might help her get home (which she heard about from a woman who was NOT Glinda, but an older small, hunched wrinkly woman, who was indeed a Good Witch), she puts on a blue gingham dress, the silver shoes, and a yellow bonnet, which I supposed she wears for the entire trip… Since that blew my mind, I scrapped my childhood image of the iconic Dorothy, and drew her with shorter, curlier brown hair. Myla and I both saw Toto pretty much the same, which makes sense, since they described him pretty well.
The Wicked Witch of the West was a fun one, as she was described in the book as having one eye that was magic and could see everything in the land she ruled over. “What did she have in the place where her other eye was?” Myla asked me. “Well, they never really said if she lost one of her eyes, or if it was one eye like a cylclops.” So we decided to both draw her as a grumpy ol’ cyclops. And they never actually said her skin was green, so I just drew her with a greenish tint. (Still, I think it might’ve been fun to draw her like a sort of cyborg, or like Mad-Eye Moody from Harry Potter.) 🙂
We haven’t yet drawn my favorite characters, the Flying Monkeys…but I was surprised that their story was MUCH different in the movie, where the Witch just bossed them around all the time, whenever she wanted. In the book, there is a golden jeweled cap that the Witch puts on, says a goofy little chant, and the monkeys come do whatever she commands. The catch is that the wearer of the cap can only call the monkeys three times (she’s already called them twice), and then the hat must be passed on to someone else. So when the Wicked Witch sees the travelers in her country, she sends…the WOLVES to go hunt them down. When that doesn’t work, she calls the CROWS. Then the BEES. Then the WINKIES. (wait, what? “Where are the goshdarned monkeys??” I was thinking at the time). Finally, when all of those are defeated, she decides to use her last and final monkey-call to attack them.
The monkeys have a whole other back story, but it’s a bit long…
…So there it is! What started as a simple way to pass the time on a long road trip turned out to be a pretty fun project for us both. I’m pretty happy about how much she got into it!
I had nearly forgotten that when I was in high school, I had an AP English assignment to do a paper on imagery from the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and I drew each character as I had seen them in the descriptions I read. It had always been one of my favorite assignments, and I had nearly forgotten about it until Myla came up with this one.
We’ve read a few actual chapter books at bedtime, like the Spiderwick Chronicles (of course), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr. Fox, James and the Giant Peach, How to Train Your Dragon, and The Phantom Tollbooth, to name a few–ALL of which would probably be amazing for this project. I think the key is finding out if your kid’s into it first.
But if not, hey–what’s to stop you from giving it a try yourself? 🙂
Thimbletack!
Last week, Myla’s school celebrated reading week. Myla never misses an opportunity to wear any kind of costume to school, and when the day came to “dress as your favorite book character,” she immediately said, “THIMBLETACK!”
If you’re not familiar, Thimbletack is a house brownie in the Spiderwick Chronicles books by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi (containing Mr. DiTerlizzi’s beautiful illustrations), and we have consumed the entire book series like cake in our bedtime reading time.
I always love a good creative challenge. But how the heck was I going to pull off a Thimbletack? With our busy life, I had waited til the last minute on this one, and found myself scrambling for an idea the night before. Thankfully, this was one of those times when the planets aligned and the stars shone down on my craft room, and I was able to magically whip something together within a half hour.
House Brownies, according to the book, make their clothes up from things they find around the house, and their little hats are made from thimbles or scraps of fabric, with buttons and things tucked in. I didn’t know HOW the heck I was going to make a hat with that sort of look….until I remembered a hat called a pakol that my husband had brought back from his last deployment to Afghanistan. I unrolled it, and it had nearly the same silhouette. Magical sparkling birds sang songs of happiness as they flew around my shoulders.
Unsure whether or not my husband would mind me destroying this deployment souvenir, I maintained the integrity of the hat by wrapping it with a burlap ribbon and pinning it to the hat. On the burlap ribbon, I hot-glued a pair of quickly-sewn ears. I dug through one of my many craft drawers and found (to my surprise) several giant buttons that I do not ever remember intentionally purchasing. I hot-glued those to the burlap ribbon, along with some cheap paintbrushes (because when you send something with your kid to school, you have to prepare for the fact that you might never see it again), and BOOM: I think we got what we were going for…
So cute! And not too shabby for the night before. She has a pair of ratty jeans that reeeeally need to be retired, but they came in perfectly for a dress-up day like this. I copied the book jacket, filled it with printer paper, and stapled the sides, to make Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide (which Thimbletack protects). She had a great time with that on its own, just drawing fairies and other imaginary creatures at breakfast.
I draw on her lunch napkin every day (been doing it since she started school), so that day, a little Thimbletack greeted her…
So it turned out pretty well, and essentially just involved her wearing a decked-out hat!
As a fun little side, Myla’s affection for Thimbletack was already there, but she found him even more lovely when we did an art trade with Mr. DiTerlizzi a few months back. We had shared comments often on Instagram, and traded a few things, but the best was a portrait Myla and I did of his daughter, who was a big fan of the Labyrinth…
We drew her as Jareth / Sarah, and Myla drew the main characters behind her–it was so much fun!
In return, he sent us a WONDERFUL package full of magical things, but most especially this:
It’s his Spiderwick character, Thimbletack, collaborating with a mockingbird. Get it?!? Because of our collaborations? Because I’m the mockingbird?!?! I was so very touched, and it’s one of my very favorite pieces of artwork–it sits next to my bed, above the tiny original painting of Big Bird by Carroll Spinney.
And that’s our little story of Thimbletack and the 30-minute costume for reading week. Have you ever had to last-minute throw something together that turned out pretty cool? Well, if you ever do, I hope magic craft-fairies shine down from the sky and light your way. 🙂
Bird Nests and Trust
When our daughter was a baby, she had a lovely little mess of curls on top of her head that I lovingly referred to as her bird’s nest. I drew pictures of it. I made photo collages of it (complete with little mockingbird!).
So last week I was browsing the Monster/EverAfter High section of a store (like adults do), and I came across the most wonderful thing that made me instantly smile: An Ever After High doll named “Featherly,” complete with curly hair and a little BIRD NEST.
As I mentioned, I’ve been randomly addicted to customizing dolls lately, and set about repainting her immediately. I wanted her to look a little more like a little girl. A little more like Myla. Not in a weird voodoo-doll “I want you to be my pretty little doll and never grow up” way, but just in a simply innocently weird, “I want to make a doll that looks like my kid” way. (Hey, it’s not THAT weird. Girls get those American Girl dolls and dress like them, right??)
So here she is all repainted and pretty… I’ve still got a little learning to do with customizing dolls, but I’m having fun, and the rest will come with practice.
My technique’s a little more scratchy and sketchy than people who do this professionally, but it feels good to see a new little look shining through.
I even redrew some of her drawings onto the doll’s legs, like little doodle-tattoos.
Myla’s seen me do some customizations lately, and asked if she could give it a try. So once , when she had a chance to choose a toy, she chose a Monster High Boo-tique kit. She’s not at all interested in clothing, but the kit inspired her, and she asked if she could draw on the actual doll instead.
Now, Myla is a kid who hears “no” a lot. We give her discipline. She has rules. But sometimes, when you can allow it, a simple yes can make a kid shine.
Awhile later, she showed me her masterpiece…
Okay, I know what you’re thinking–quite terrifying, right? The thing is, she made it her own, and it made her so happy. And it didn’t take a lot on my part. In this case, saying “yes” told her “I believe that you can do it.” And no matter what it looks like, she OWNED it. As wonky as it was, she was pretty proud of her. “I messed up on the eyes,” she said, “and I was frustrated, until I just cut some new ones out of paper.” She markered her hair. She drew a snake tongue on her mouth. Her name is Alia, and she’s an alien (of course).
What did it cost me? A doll. Fifteen dollars for a chunk of confidence? I’ll take it.
One of the things I learned from collaborating with her when she was four was that if you loosen the chains of thinking things should be “just so,” that magical things can happen. As I said in that post so long ago, “Those things you hold so dear cannot change and grow and expand unless you loosen your grip on them a little.” And the best part is that the confidence she’ll get from me trusting her is worth way more than the sanctity of any doll.
The Little Things
Ages ago, I wrote about something I was trying out–painting tiny miniatures. It was something new for me, but DANG I had so much fun with it!
I mentioned in that post that I was inspired to try the tiny things after seeing the tiny cameos of Mab Graves. Since then, I’ve chatted with her online (have I mentioned how much I love Instagram as a resource for artists???) and we’ve sort of shared a little artwork back and forth.
If you follow her Instagram page, you’ve probably become familiar with her nephew, Ransom, and all the silly fun things they do together. That’s when I decided to paint a tiny Ransom on a rectangular porcelain tile, 1″ x 1.5″…Well, she got the package this week, and sent me some lovely photos of it (because her light box skills are strong)…
Since I was having so much fun, I painted a few other little things. Just because I wanted to…and because she let me. 🙂
So we were chatting once about how since my husband’s often deployed, I don’t really have many good photos of Myla and me painting together…
And when I sent a photo of another little piece I did for her, she sent me THIS:
YOU GUYS. It’s a tiny painted cameo of Myla and me!! With Donkey!! And dinosaurs and bats, because that’s how Myla rolls. Maybe I can express my excitement with a few extra exclamation points:!!! I was floored and grateful. It’s so tiny and lovely! It’s supposed to come in a day or two, and I can’t wait to see it.
I’ve really been so lucky with the people I’ve met online (knockonwood). And the artists I’ve met on Instagram–save for a random few whose ego have overtaken their personalities (and that’s okay; that’s their choice)–have been the most generous people, in sharing their ideas, resources, tips, techniques, and thoughts. The wonderful artists I’ve met are too many to name (Lori Nelson, Sean Regalado, Annie Frenzel, Tony DiTerlizzi, Aaron McMillan, Matt Gordon, Tyler Thrasher, Kendyl Lauzon, Zach Landrum, Aletta Walker, and of course, Mab Graves, just scratch the surface of the list of artists and online friends who have helped and inspired me in some small way). And all it really takes is a little kindness. A little consideration.
Sometimes, it’s the little things that mean the most. A friend once told me that the most precious thing you could give someone is your time. To me, the fact that someone would take a little of their own time to spread a little kindness is one of the best kinds of things.
So if you get a chance, see if you can share a little kindness today! Nothing big. You can open a door. Pick up a dropped thing up for someone. Tell someone you like their shirt (but only if you really mean it). Let someone in front of you in line.
Because there’s nothing at all wrong with sharing the little things.
(PS: If anyone’s interested, I’ve put up a few offers in my etsy shop for tiny CUSTOM pendant portraits. So if you’d like a tiny kid or pet of your own, very similar to Mab’s, check me out over there on etsy and say hello!
Working Artists
A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how Myla wanted to be a “real artist” and make people happy with artwork. Although I assured her that she already WAS a “real artist,” we took on ten commissions, and I thought I’d post on how they were going.
First off, I start by drawing a head from the pictures that were sent. I keep it pretty straightforward, and try to keep it fairly simple. Next, when she’s looking for a fun project to work on, I’ll ask if she’d like to start on some of the custom portraits…two words she had previously not known, but is now quite familiar with.
From the emails the client sent, I would tell her a little about the person. “they call him a wiggle-worm, they love garden scenes, and his favorite toy is rainbow-colored.” So she drew the little baby as a rainbow-colored caterpillar, watering his garden, with an ant peeking in on him…
Or: “they call her ‘Princess Batman,” and her favorite animal is a fox.” She drew the girl as a fox with bat-wings and a crown, carrying a space helmet in her hand. Maybe a little literal, but fun nonetheless…
Or: “He had a pirate wedding, and he loves Star Wars and space.” So she drew him as a space pirate, with a light saber and Solo’s blaster, in a great battle with an alien on Jupiter, who’s chucking knives at him…
And there was this one, who loved magical creatures, like unicorns, mermaids, and whales…so she drew her as a whale-hugging merm-i-corn. (That’s a word, right?) If you look carefully, you’ll notice her torso is actually made of unicorn hair…because she wanted to make sure the unicorn had a bit of the spotlight, as well…
With this one, I said, “she loves magical things, like fairies and moths, and she collects coffee cups.” …So she drew her as a luna moth fairy–with teensy weensy itty bitty coffee cups in her hand, and decorating her hair…
Thankfully, so many people were up for letting us use our creativity, and being open to whatever came out. Myla LOVED the “portrait assignments.” She loved having a little prompt. And having someone list an idea of what they have in mind for their portrait has actually become a GOOD exercise for her in limitations.
She really loves to tell little stories with her drawings, (as with the space pirate above, and the gnome fairy below), but I have to remind her that they still want it to be a portrait of someone they love, so maybe hold back a smidge of the wildness a little, so that everyone’s happy.
At first, it feels like I’m limiting her creativity, which is something I was very wary of, and worried about early on…But actually, I’m finding it to be a very GOOD practice for her–to be able to work on something for someone else within certain parameters and still have fun with it. I think this is something that will come in handy in whatever job field she chooses, and is especially helpful if she chooses to be a working artist.
It feels like she’s kind of like a pinball in a pinball machine–she gets to bounce around a bit, but she still has a basic path. And that’s good.
So we’re waiting to finish the last three…in the meantime, we may have more in the future; I’ll be sure to post if we do! I don’t want to overwhelm her. I have asked her every step of the way if it’s fun…if it’s a challenge…if it’s something she enjoys…and so far, it’s been a resounding yes. She is six going on 36, and she is excited to be making people smile. She wants to do lots of things, and she wants to make people happy with her art.
For now, I guess I’m pretty okay with that. 🙂
Crazy Doll Lady
It’s been awhile since I posted about playing with dolls…
Back then, I was customizing a Blythe and some Monster High dolls, along with “tattooing” some blank bodies that my friend Aletta (from theFoxyToyBox) let me play with.
(So I’m not sure if I’ve ever shared all the doll customs I played around with. I feel like I’ve shared them before, but a rudimentary search shows only my initial post. Considering I’ve been doing this blog a few years now, I don’t THINK I’m repeating…I try REEALLY hard not to repeat. (But if I do, in fact, repeat, please just consider it an old friend coming to say hello again…)…)
Awhile back, my friend Aletta sent these old used dolls for me to play with, and I took the opportunity to repaint them using all the skillful skills I learned from the magical world of Pinterest.
If you want to paint on Monster High dolls, trust me–I’m not the best one to learn from, because there are people who are WAY better pro at it than me. But I wiped off their paint with nail polish remover (I describe my wonky process here), painted in acrylics, and sealed with with Testors spray varnish to protect the plastic without leaving it sticky. And OMGosh they were so much fun.
I got little wigs in Etsy shops, because I am weird like that. And because they’re GORGEOUS. You pretty much just cut off their store-hair and glue on the lovely wigs, and BOOM–magic.
Ages ago, I bought a Bigfoot Monster High doll to repaint (because I couldn’t pass up those HUGE feet and hairy legs). I repainted her, paying lots of detail to that hair, and found a wig that matched her perfectly. I even contacted the wigmaker on etsy, asking if she could send a little extra scrap fur to put around her, which she kindly did. So here she is, with her little mini skirt of hair:
I tried to put her in that bigfoot hunched pose from “real” Bigfoot photos, but Monster High dolls are a little too poised to hunch. But lookit that fantastic leg stubble! Hahah
Even one doll (which Myla asked me to keep unpainted) was missing an arm, and she asked if I could build her one (because I can apparently do anything). I asked if it could be a robot arm, and she said, “of COURSE!” So a few electronic bits later, and I was able to hot-glue a fairly decent “robotic” appendage, which Myla was VERY happy with.
What’s funny, is that my occasional interest in repainting dolls has inspired our 6-year old to attempt to get me to buy her new Monster High dolls. “MOM! Can we please get it if I promise to PAINT it???” Usually our rule is that if I let her get something, she can pick a PROJECT, not just a toy. Which is why she tries, at times, to get me to buy new dolls. It’s tempting, really, considering our thrift stores here don’t HAVE any used ones, and holy cow, one time I saw a LUNA MOTH Monster High doll that even I wanted to repaint!! But I have to use restraint–they’re expensive after awhile, and we can’t just go buy toys for no reason (at least not once you become a parent) so I don’t really allow it.
But they ARE fun….
Anyway, I’ll share more of how our custom collaborations are going next week–Myla is having lots of fun with them! For now, have a great rest of the week! 🙂
Custom Collaborations!?
If you’ve follow this blog for awhile, you may already be familiar with the collaborations Myla and I did when she was four…
Back then, lots of people asked if we’d do custom collaborations–where maybe they could send photos for me to draw from, and have Myla draw the bodies. LOTS. of. people. I mean, TONS of people. I mean, so many that it was overwhelming.
I always said no. I wasn’t trying to be rude or elitist, but the most important thing to me was that our daughter have FUN drawing. I didn’t want it to be a JOB at age four. I was so overwhelmed with requests that it would’ve been impossible to have her do them at age four and still make it fun…especially since people asked for specifics: a bird, a donkey, a bear. Can you imagine making a 4 year old sit down and do custom orders? While it sounds like it would’ve been nice, I assure you, it would’ve been impossible. And exhausting. And most importantly, it wouldn’t have been fun.
But now Myla is six, and wants to “be a grownup.” Despite my convincing her to stay a kid forever (because being a grownup stinks big time), she still wants to do big-kid things. One of those things, surprisingly, has involved the desire to do custom drawings.
When we ran the Kickstarter to print a book of our collected work (which you can get here, by the way) I offered as one reward level a hand drawn portrait (by me) onto a pre-printed drawing of Myla’s, which was my alternative solution, aside from trying to make her do them all by hand, and still allowed me to give people a portrait that would make them smile.
So she asked me the other day why I never let her do custom pieces…and I told her all of the above. She’s seen me do custom portraits for people, and didn’t realize I had never allowed it when she was younger.
“But I’m older now,” she said. “And I know I could do it.”
“The thing about custom work is that you have to draw what people WANT you to draw. And I always just wanted you to draw whatever made you happy.”
“But now I can do that. I can draw what people ask.”
“They might say they like turtles, and you might feel like drawing robots.”
“But I know I can do it. Now I want to make OTHER people happy.” (Which is funny, because that’s my favorite part of custom portraits, as well.) “So maybe if that happens, I could do a robot-turtle” (which sounds awesome, actually).
So there it is. That’s where we are.
I told her we’d try it. So here we go: I’m only starting with five, in my Etsy shop, so please have a look! For the first time ever! And not for very long. Once you purchase a portrait, you can send me reference photos for a single face, and maybe tell me something that person is into…and I’ll do my best to steer the kiddo in that direction for her part.
So If you’re up for an interesting portrait and you’ve got wiggle room for a 6-year old’s creativity, combined with my illustrations, we’d love to make you happy! 🙂
UPDATE: WOW those five sold out in the first ten minutes! I added five more, but that’s probably all I’ll add for now, until I see how she handles these. Maybe if she has fun with them, we’ll offer a few more. Thank you so much for all your support. 🙂
UPDATE UPDATE: Sold out! Sorry… If she enjoys doing these, we may offer them again sometime! Thanks!
Blast from the past: So cute!! Wonderful reader Laurie reminded me of one of the VERY few portraits we did when Myla was four, as a prize for a creative contest we ran on the blog ages ago. Here are the bluebirds Myla turned her and her daughter into:
Sick
This has been one fun past week, lemme tell ya.
First off, I should explain that I have some back condition called “ankylosing spondylitis.” It’s a really fun thing, because after 12 years of medications, injections, and infusions, no one can seem to figure out how to treat it. It’ll be fine for MONTHS and months, and then BOOM–pain and spasms so bad I can’t walk.
Last weekend, with a bit of a painful limp, I was determined to take Myla out & about. We drove to the Waco Zoo, but by the time I got there, I could barely walk, and decided it’d be easier to push around in one of the courtesy wheelchairs. We looked a mess: Me, with Myla on my lap at times, rolling around to all the exhibits. I got out on the uphill slopes and slowly limped my way up, pushing Myla in the chair. When I was feeling wobbly, Myla would offer me her shoulder to hold onto for balance. “Just hold my shoulder, Mom.” Several of the exhibits were closed because it was actually COLD in Texas for once, but we made the best of it, and had a good time anyway.
EXCEPT that by the time we got home, I had spasms so bad I was in tears and could barely walk. Thank goodness my mom was 8 hours away, and was able to drive down and help take care of us (Thanks, Mom!). After many appointments, much medication and rest, I’m pretty much back to my normal level of constant discomfort.
So THIS weekend, Myla built a backpack fairy machine. Like you do. It was made out of a cardboard box, a milk jug, and lots of duct tape.
And then she came right inside, spiked a fever of 101, and wanted to go to bed.
So we’ve spent this long weekend at home, pretty much on the couch, bringing down a fever and binge-watching kid’s movies.
At some point this weekend, she drew this picture of me, with a cane and a thermometer, taking care of her, sick in bed. I sent my husband the picture (he’s deployed), and he noticed, “she sees you’re in pain, but that you’re still taking care of her.” Which was awesome, because that’s exactly the way it was. (And at least she drew me with a smile, instead of wincing in pain).
Having a sick kid does not always mean they’re just asleep on the couch–she really tried very hard to entertain herself with paper projects, mostly related to whatever movies we watched.
Despite fighting a fever and sucking on cough drops, she kept VERY busy with scissors, paper, and tape. ALL WEEKEND.
It’s actually a little hard to keep up with–she built an entire petting zoo (complete with pteranadons, ducks, and baby otters) out of paper and tape. And after we watched the newest Goosebumps movie (admittedly an odd choice for her), she started making books with latches, and the creatures that come out of them….like this floating demon-poodle:
In any case, we’re nearly back to normal! Just trying to get back on our feet…in some ways, literally. That whole thing about taking care of yourself so you can take care of others? That stuff’s true. In my attempt to care for Myla and get out to the zoo for something to do, I ignored my own pain and injured myself further, when I should’ve just taken it easy. I’m not a “take it easy” kind of person, so that’s pretty hard for me to do.
I could take a lesson from Myla, though (as I often do), by just accepting it, relaxing, and making the most of it with art projects. On the couch binge-watching movies if I have to. It’s often hard for me to tell when “pushing it” will help or hurt (especially with the “push through the pain” army mentality I’ve got ingrained in me). In any case, we’re finally on the mend now! So we’re going to take it a little easy this week…which is going to be better for us in the long run, I’m sure.
So from us to you, take care of yourselves!
Imaginary Monsters
“Mom, are mermaids real?” Well, no one’s ever really seen proof of a mermaid. “But they COULD be real.” I suppose they could, but so far nobody has found proof, so we can’t say for sure. “Well they’re real, I know they are. Oceans are deep, maybe they just haven’t found any proof yet.” …Okay.
Myla is six, and believes in EVERYTHING. I know this because she told me so. “All that stuff that’s not real–I believe in it.” She doesn’t have any interest in the burden of proof. If she wants to, she just believes. She CHOOSES to. And who am I to tell her she’s right or wrong?
I read a statistic from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association that the ocean “covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface and contains 97 percent of the planet’s water, yet more than 95 percent of the underwater world remains unexplored.” Can you IMAGINE? 97 percent of the oceans on our earth are UNEXPLORED! In our people-filled world, it seems odd to think of places of the world humans haven’t touched, but with stats like that, it’s absolutely, 100 percent possible.
So Myla believes in everything. We once built a little gnome house, and found tiny muddy footprints from the yard (I may or may not admit to being responsible for those).
My favorite thing to do with Myla is to take walks through the woods. When I was younger and my dad was stationed in Germany, my family always took long walks through the woods. My dad would bring dental floss and build gnome bridges with twigs across little streams. My sister and I would pretend we could see gnome houses in the knots in the trees, and we’d have stick-sword fights. I have lots of wonderful memories from inside the forest.
So on the first day of the new year, I took Myla on a hike. She found a muddy footprint. “It’s proof! A yeti was here!” Hm. I don’t know, there’s a dog paw print next to it… “Nope, it’s a yeti. Maybe he has a dog that’s a friend.” Okay.
(She also believes she can fly…but only for very short moments, when she jumps from one place to another.)
There were broken twigs on the ground. Fairy bones! And broken rocks, which everyone knows that forest creatures eat. We obviously were treading on what once was the site of a huge fairy battle.
We passed some people going off on a hike of their own. “Hi there! We found yeti footprints!” Myla shouted to them. Smiling politely, they scurried awkwardly away. This did not phase my girl in the slightest.
When we got home, I was looking at some of the photos I took on our walk, and printed some of them. Looking closely, I decided to draw in and paint an imaginary monster onto this one of a stream crossing–because even though he didn’t show up in pictures, I’m almost certain he was there.
There was another of her looking at the forest in a clearing, and I was sure this creature was there, too.
I went back and looked at some of the photos we took over break, from the woods near where my grandma used to live.
They were there, too. I just needed to paint them in.
I’ve always been one for proof and logic, which is why it’s so wonderful to see her believe whatever she wants, to see through her imagination. She’s not an infant, I’m sure somewhere she doesn’t REALLY think they exist…but none of that matters to her. It’s more FUN for her to believe. The world is more beautiful and interesting that way. She chooses to believe them, so they are.
We’ve had extensive conversation about gnomes and dwarves, fairies and mermaids, the loch ness monster…and god. My answer to all of these when she asks, is that if you truly believe in them, no one can tell you it’s wrong. No one should make you feel bad for what you believe in, even if it’s completely different than what they believe. And if someone believes differently than you do, that’s okay too. There’s no need to argue about it. There’s no need to pressure them to believe what you believe. Someone believing differently doesn’t threaten your own belief, so there’s no need to disagree. You believe what you believe, and no one can take that away.
busy mockingbird 