Feckless Friday: Not Pepper Paints Edition
Pepper Paints is my friend Kristen in real life. It’s true. I know you can’t tell by our blogs, but we have a lot in common. I don’t want to sully her reputation by outing her poor choice in friends, but yeah, we’re friends. My kids go to her house and you’ll see them in some of her gorgeous pictures. And, you’ll notice, I ain’t no Pepper Paints.
In case you didn’t know, my kids run a product review website called Kids Know Stuff. We get pitches for stuff and sometimes we say yes and sometimes we say no and sometimes we get a pitch to review food and, because I’m hungry when I read it, I agree. That’s what happened when we got the pitch for some meatballs. I didn’t realize that the best thing about the product was that they would come packed in dry ice. It came early in the morning. Ten o’clock is early some days. It was still summer and we are homeschoolers. It was after Labor Day, but that is still technically summer. Anyway! The dry ice came and we played with it. And I took pictures:
Not good pictures, and you’ll notice that everybody is still in their pajamas, but still. Technically, Maya is wearing a real shirt, but she slept in it so it was pajamas. ANYWAY! I documented it. We talked about it. I hit them with a ruler every time they said, “Look how it’s melting!” instead of “Look how it’s sublimating!” I thought that was appropriate.
It was out of the ordinary for our homeschool and Liberty hit the nail on the head when she said, “It’s almost like we’re at Kristen’s house.”
She was so right. It’s just not like Pepper Paints over here. But, let’s get into the way-back machine for a minute so I can tell you about a time when it was like Pepper Paints around here. People who knew me in Chesaning before Lena and Liberty were 6 can vouch for me. We did art stuff. All the frickin’ time. Until Lena and Liberty developed their own interests. And even after that, I still made them take clay classes and other art classes. Until they cried and I decided to take a hard look at why I was placing value on those things instead of letting the kids do what they want and just valuing the process. It’s easy to value traditional art over digital art. It’s easy to value reading novels over reading graphic novels. It’s easy to value perfect spelling instead of bloggy brainstorming (Lena and Liberty both have blogs and I used to make them do spell check and grammar with it, but that’s what Kids Know Stuff is for now. Their own personal blogs need to be their own personal brain farts, so back OFF! Sheesh). But that’s not cool and that’s not what we’re about. We’re about teaching kids how to learn instead of forcing what to learn on them. Kristen’s house is the same way, but her kids’ interests are different. This is art for Liberty:
And Lena:
Maya is a bit more traditional artsy, and she gets out the scissors, paint, glue, fancy paper, stickers, and whatever else and does stuff with them. She also does this:
It’s called “Warren and Ruth.” Warren and Ruth are Maya’s little friends.
This post is dumb. It started out being “I’m feckless because I suck at being like Kristen,” but then it turned into “I’m feckless because I used to try to force my digital kids to be more traditional,” and now it’s just “I’m feckless because this wasn’t really thought out all that well.” Sheesh.
Maybe you can do better. Be feckless (or point out the fecklessness of others) on your blog, on your Twitter, on your Facebook and leave a comment telling me where I can find your fecklessness so I can feel better about myself. You can link to me if you want to, but you don’t have to because I took my ads down and so I’m not a stat whore anymore. Good day.
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:31 am
Hey-this one’s not so feckless! You had a good week. I gave everyone a nightmare thought by twittering about my white butt vs old tattered undies. It’s a lose-lose situation.
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October 2nd, 2009 at 10:31 am
I’m pretty impressed by your use of the word “sublimate” bc I would’ve probably pointed to the dry ice doing its thing and said to my kids “look, it’s melting?” Maybe I should homeschool with your family sometime Abby.
And Kristen– I thought your tweet about your white butt & tattered undies was funny! No nightmares here
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Abby Reply:
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:53 am
@Amy It’s only because I had to google “Shit kids can do with dry ice” that I found out that it doesn’t melt, but sublimates. Google is impressive. Me? Not so much.
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October 2nd, 2009 at 10:39 am
[...] to have the opportunity to showcase our most imperfect selves every Friday with the Brand New Meme: Feckless Friday. Actually this is the third week but I haven’t had it together enough to post yet because I [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:27 pm
[...] got the idea for the Feckless Friday post from Dawn, who got it from Abby. Dawn writes beautifully, and I love what she writes about [...]
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:33 pm
I love this idea. Great! Mine is at:
http://justenjoyhim.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/feckless-friday-my-closet-with-no-doors/
Love your google search too!!
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October 2nd, 2009 at 10:00 pm
I played too, even though I’m a little slow at getting it!
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