I was an only child in that my half sisters never lived with us and were much much older. So I spent a lot of time alone. If memory serves, it all started on Groundhog's day, which when you grow up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania is actually a big deal. So in school we made this little paper groundhog, colored him in, put him on a popsicle stick in a styrofoam cup that we colored and drew on dirt, grass and flowers, so that he could pop out to see if there was more winter or an early spring.
I brought my craft home proudly but decided that the groundhog needed a way better habitat. So I got an old shoe box and made him a 3 room house for his comfort. This, to date, is one of my mom's favorite stories. From then on I made cardboard homes for any and everything that needed it.
When I was a nanny I bestowed my talent upon the 5 year old I spent my days with and her mind was blown. Give me a gingerbread house and I'm useless, give me some cardboard and weird thing to build a home or habitat for and I'm there, with gusto.
For Easter this year I broke down and got my daughter an LOL doll. I honestly don't fully understand the whole LOL thing and I'm not here to judge it. She's been talking about it a lot so I spent good Friday hunting this thing down and found one. I didn't choose the best one for my first LOL experience but this child is obsessed. She LOVES it.
My kid tore through it in 2 seconds, mostly excited for the coloring and candy. Right after Grandma left, I settled into my room for some Netflix and Popcorn before tackling the laundry and my daughter had taken the box from under her basket, along with her LOL doll, and started making her a house. She was drawing in a bathroom and bedroom and everything:
I need to find more pictures. As you can see, a little car she got for Easter was also outside the door that I had to help her cut. It is pretty awesome, I can't lie.
It made me so happy to see her creating this. And it's not even the first time she's done something like this, I just keyed in more to this one, and noticed her commitment to it.
You see, I feel often that everything I carry mentally, especially lately, gets taken out on her, very much inadvertently. Circumstances have made me more tired, less active with her and not as good of a mom as I should be. There are nights when she just wants dinner in front of the TV and I sneak a salad in my room and she comes in and hugs me and asks for dessert and we kind of just do our own thing in proximity. But then I feel bad like I was a crap mom for not making her eat like a lady at the table and tell me about her day.
It's moments like the one where she crafted a new home for her new favorite toy where I'm like, okay I'm actually not doing so badly. I try to raise her to be independent, strong, capable, smart, funny and outgoing, which I'm told she is. I just think motherhood is hard. There are so many times I feel like I'm on such a solo mission to guide her and be fair but as her mom and not her friend. It's not an easy task.
She's plugged into so much more than I'd imagined and is almost too smart for her own good, so sometimes I feel like she heals with me when it comes to mental stuff. Just as I work from 8 to 5, that kid is in school and aftercare from 9 to 6 with all the activities on the weekends. I think she's earned time to veg and definitely to just be a kid.
I kind of love that she got my weird talent for cardboard housing. I made so many cool things when I was younger that I just loved. They all had little stories and worlds and reasons for being that I was eager and happy to explain to anyone who wanted to listen. I loved just expanding upon one silly craft that could keep my imagination going. And what I couldn't buy or have from some commercial, or if there was some toy that my friends might have but I couldn't, I made for myself. I think my daughter getting that hereditary trait is okay; kind of bad ass really. And there's always therapy for all the other traits!
