It is Not a Good Idea…

…To give a 4-year-old a pair of scissors and a pack of construction paper – unsupervised. Zachary was so excited about the scissors I bought for him, and the pack of construction paper, that he has taken to coloring & cutting every day. The only problem is, when he cuts, he CUTS. It started over the weekend, and he could cut little squares & glue them on a larger piece of paper. This was all well & good until I went over to where he was doing his little art project and realized that there were tiny bits of paper EVERYWHERE! We asked him to clean it up, so he picked up most of it. But instead of putting it in the garbage can, he stuffs it into his toy garbage truck. So now we have a toy garbage truck that it actually filled with garbage (who would have thought?) And last night I was helping him clean up, and some of the bits were so small that I practically had to get a wet paper towel to get them off the floor.

Back to Zachary’s “Around the World Lunch” for a moment…I’m still debating what to bring, but when I was picking them up yesterday, the mom of one of the girls in Zachary’s class was talking to the teacher – I guess she was having a hard time coming up with ANYTHING to bring. The reason is because they assigned her “South Pole”! OK, seriously – South Pole is not even a country, and I’m pretty sure the only people who live there are not actually people at all, but rather, penguins. I asked if her she was going to just bring a big bowl of ice. The teacher suggested she could bring something like ice cream or sherbet. I guess that makes sense…although if I was a South Polian, I’m pretty sure the LAST thing I would want is a bowl of ice cream. I’d rather have a big mug of hot chocolate or something warm like that. Anyway, I think I have our item narrowed down to either cannolis (although all of the recipes I’ve seen for them sound kind of complicated, even if I can find the shells pre-made) or pasta with a choice of either marinara, alfredo, or pesto sauce (get it – red, white, & green…just like the Italian flag!)

Liam is doing well too – fingers are almost 100% healed (he’s just had a Band-Aid on one finger the past few days…don’t think he even had a Band-Aid on today). He is also enjoying the new art supplies. I stocked up on crayons last week (25 cents a pack for Crayolas at Wal-Mart!). In fact, I think he is enjoying them a little TOO much. Josh called me into the family room the other day and said, “Take a look at what your son did.” I looked, and our white armoire thing (that used to be my mom’s TV cabinet, and now it is our place to stash toys when people come over), had a rainbow of colors all over the front. My first response: “Which son???” Of course Zachary was VERY quick to let me know that he did not do it. Hard to know for sure whether he did it or not, but I’d like to think he knows better. Liam, on the other hand…let’s just say he uses crayons in a vigorous manner, so it’s entirely possible that he was the culprit. We will never know for sure. What I do know is that Mr. Clean & his Magic Eraser have come to the rescue again. Armoire is back to normal, and crayons are now kept WAY out of Liam’s reach when they are not being used…