Up until now, this blog has been about my slight obsession with jewellery design. But today I took a break from creating and tackled a more difficult project - weeding through my daughter's drawings and schoolwork from last year. Lauren is 5, and LOVES to draw. She is just like I was at her age. She draws almost every day which means that, between schoolwork and endless drawings from home, every year I end up with a pile that looks like this:
Each year I promise myself that I will go through her drawings throughout the year so I don't have to do this. But it never happens - life gets in the way. So at the start of each school year I sit down on the floor surrounded by my daughter's creations, and go through them one by one. It's a daunting task - not only because there's so many, but because I really find it hard to let any of them go. I am a tosser by nature. I love to be organized, I love the act of organizing, I actually look forward to cleaning out my closets. But since the first day my 18-month old daughter brought home a paper with a small scribble in the center, I couldn't bring myself to get rid of any of her work. I don't think anyone who hasn't been a parent would really understand such an attachment, but the act of taking anything that my daughter made and placing it in a garbage can was really hard for me. Still, the logical side of me said that we would soon need a bigger house if I chose to keep it all.
Well, after an hour or so of contemplation, I got the pile down to this:
This is pretty good; I think I'm getting better at this. Here are a few highlights from my budding artist:
Princesses continue to be a favourite theme, always with long dresses, long hair and long eyelashes.
Sometimes Lauren copies characters from her favourite movies, like this one from Monsters Inc. (the words at the top are, "I C Mom. I C Dad".
Finally, the ones that are impossible to throw away. There are countless drawings of
three people: a woman, a very tall man and a little girl. Go figure.
I love you too, little artist.
