Craft Crazy

I don’t know what’s worse, that Mouse is crazy about crafts or that crafts make me crazy. Together, we are not such a great combination.

Lately, I’ve felt like a craft cruise director, needing to provide all manner of crafting supplies in copious quantities at any given time. Usually, she requests this at my LEAST patient time of the day.

Now, when we’re talking about “crafts” I use the term very loosely. I wouldn’t have a problem if even SOMETIMES she’d be open to a suggestion to a useful craft, (like ornaments etc) especially one that I can, ahem, move on from my house. But crafts at this house involve piling mountains of popsicle sticks, buckets of glue, covering it all in embroidery floss, shiny rocks and sparkles and googly eyes and standing back to admire the creation.

And of course with every addition, I must “ooooo and ahhhh” and personally inspect.

We’ve had 2 playdates that have had to involve ‘crafts’ this week. We’ve gone through a whole set of Christmas foamies with popsicle sticks and google eyes, 9 skeins of embroidery floss, almost 1 bottle of white glue, and an entire large bottle of sparkle glue. All globbed on flimsy construction paper.

I try to be supportive of the creative process and most of the time, I’m ok with it. I get that she needs to create. But I have to say that after a while of just watching this stuff go into the garbage, because a) where do you store this stuff and b) what can you DO with it c) how do you deal with 25 of them, a month, it's hard not to go a little crazy at the wastefulness of this excessive 'crafting'.

And all crafts must BE for someone. She can’t just make them to make them. At some point she will say “Mommy, I’m making this for….”. And most of the time, it’s me. I should be grateful, and generally I am, but today, after helping 14 kindergarteners for the last 2 days with school crafts and cooking projects, is one of those days where I just can’t watch. I will turn my back, plug my ears and pretend I do not see the "crazy crafting" happening behind me. Sigh.