Families R Built with Love

Today was a busy and fun day. The morning was as always given over to errands and food shopping, with a visit to Kirsty at her job thrown in as well. Oddly enough I like doing errands with the kids and by and large they don't seem to hate it. We have each week an average of 5 stops but there are weeks when it is only 3 and weeks it is as many as 7. Just depends! After that, we came home, unloaded the car and I made lunch. Then we piled back in the van and headed to our church for the recycle art afternoon.

It was really cool. There were 4 of those long banquet tables just filled with supplies. You name it and I swear it was there. Paper towel tubes, egg cartons, picture frames with no back, empty puzzle boards, jackets from books etc. Beads, sand art, sequins and paint. Glue, ribbon, tissue paper, pipe cleaners, boxes. My kids eyes lit up.

KC got right to work. His first project was just covering a box in paper and then slapping some paint on it. Lissa decided she was all about paint today and did a lot of painting as well. She did a lot of experimenting with colors and shades. She'd try light blue and then dark blue for instance.

KC also made a lot of other stuff. He did a beautiful sand art sculpture and really got how to poke the sand with a thin stick to make patterns. He made a picture of a cat for his grandmother and something else which escapes my tired brain.

But what excited me the most was Robbie. KC is my "art" guy. He will always gravitate towards artistic expressions, both musical and art of this nature. He is never without a pad of paper, and a crayon or pencil.

Rob on the other hand, didn't get a lot of opportunities to dabble in art till he came home to us at almost 6 years old. He was 5 but on the tail end of 5 so to speak. And this is one of those areas where I can see that missing out on the art explorations of the early years stunted his creativity so to speak. On the plus side of things, KC's love to drawing and painting and creating naturally involves Rob. He wants his big brother to draw or paint with him and Rob will usually oblige. I have noticed over the past year that in some ways his art takes its cue from KC and he has begun to develop a bit more risk taking so to speak in his art.

But today, he really shone. He spent the first 15 minutes we were there just wandering. I ignored that. I know it is very hard for Robbie to make a decision. Deep down he is always afraid he will make the wrong choice. KC in the innocence of 4 years old, is pretty confident that he lives in the land of do overs. Eventually, Rob stopped pacing and started creating. And he did some really cool stuff. He created a picture frame with the cover of one of his favorite books pasted in the center as art. He made a glitter covered tube, sand art and a pom pom covered pillow. Once he got going, it was literally like watching that little trickle of water oozing through a dam, turn into a raging river. He was so into what he was doing. I was over the moon with excitement for him. I hope that it was a turning point for him and art will become more accessible to him as a form of self expression.