Creative freedom

Sometimes I feel like my kids live in the land of creative communism. Their crafts are often limited to what I am willing to clean up... and these days, that's not much.

Surprisingly, beads, etc. are fine - I can vacuum up the mess. But paints and playdough... ugh. Those require manual labor to clean up.

Don't get me wrong. I want my kids to be able to create and experiment and improve their artistic talents, and I try hard to give them opportunities; but lately, I've found that bending over and cleaning things up are not conducive to the prevention of "evening sickness," if you will.

The other day as we were shopping for blank cards for the girls to make homemade Valentines, I found wooden birdhouses in the clearance bin.

The girls were in love.

They've been pretty good lately.

We bought three.

That evening however, after cleaning up from round 1 of making Valentines, the girls asked if they could paint their birdhouses.

(Sigh....) "Not right now girls. It's time for bed."

I knew the moment would come when reality would catch up with me. After all, "raw" birdhouses must be painted, right?... However, I just didn't feel the energy coming anytime soon to tackle the project. "What was I thinking?" is what I was thinking.

So tonight, you can imagine how grateful I was when Dan asked the girls if they wanted to paint their birdhouses.

"Yea!" I thought. "It's not on my shoulders! I don't have to do it alone!"
It ended up being a fun family night activity. I'm so glad that I have Dan to pick up the slack when I'm dragging and balance me out when I feel like the creativity gestapo. I was able to give my kids some creative freedom without being the only one around to clean up the mess and run interference on rogue paintbrushes.

(Thanks, honey. I don't know when they would ever have been painted otherwise.)