Maya made that for me. She said it’s called, “Rainbow with a Yellow Polka-Dot,” but I’m pretty sure its full title is “Rainbow with a Yellow Polka-Dot: A Tribute to Womanhood.” Or, because she made it specifically for me, “Rainbow with a Yellow Polka-Dot: The Healing Peace of Homebirth,” or “Rainbow with a Yellow Polka-Dot: The Yellow Light of Life.” I don’t know, I’m no art major, but it just seems like there’s more to it.
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.
When it’s this dark in the morning, I can’t decide whether to spring out of bed and go on a crime spree, or just go back to sleep. One thing is for certain: I have Maya’s song in my head a lot more when I wake up to blackness. That’s probably not good. I think it’s worse at this time of year because it’s fun to see it get lighter a little bit earlier every morning and, just when it’s light at a decent enough hour, BAM! Stupid dumb ol’ spring ahead.
Anyway, here’s another installment of Disturbing Images. This time, Liberty is the artist and I think you’ll see that her art goes in a completely different direction. First, “Big Heart”:
From the artist: “I like to draw colorful hearts and I like to practice drawing my hearts.”
And the next one is called “I LOVE PEOPLES” (she typed the title in all caps when she saved it, so I assumed that was part of the art):
When asked about this piece, Liberty said, “I like drawing random stuff.” I asked her if she remembered what she was doing or what was going on at the time that made her choose the title and she said, “Um, no I don’t. Nothing was going on, I just love people.” Disturbing.
She makes me wonder how twinship changes birth order expectations. She is technically the middle child and technically one of the firstborns. She’s a peacemaker, but SHE LOVES PEOPLES and never compares herself or feels angsty about her place in the family. She’s easygoing now, but that’s only after years of occupational therapy for sensory issues. She used to be different. Still lovely and precious, of course, but she used to have a really hard time with life. The business of all of those unpredictable stuffed animals and real animals out in the world, for one thing. We couldn’t take her into the toy aisle in a supermarket without her covering her ears, closing her eyes, and crying. That was because she was afraid of the motion-activated toys. Non-animatronic stuffed animals were also not to be trusted. All that fur and those expectant eyes, pleading, “Hold me! Pet me!” Creepy. Don’t even get me started about the trauma induced by a Koosh ball. A Koosh ball could send this child running like nothing else. And when, as part of her therapy, she finally deigned to be in the same room as one, she would not touch it, but she would eat it. Weird.
Maybe the OT helped her cope with life, or maybe she’s just going along to get along and she’s going to stab us all one day. Who knows? I believe her brain was hard-wired to expect pain and suffering because of her traumatic birth (premie, c-section, aspirated amniotic fluid and had to be intubated) and then having surgery to repair the esophageal atresia and tracheoesophageal fistula when she was two days old, which meant that she couldn’t be held for a couple of weeks. She was in an isolette for 2 weeks before anybody could even hold her. So fucking sad. So that put her in a constant state of fight-or-flight, which led to some interesting coping techniques, which led to our nurse practitioner saying, “She does what? WTF? Get her to an OT!” And so we did(*cough* not until she was almost 3, though, because we were the parents and the parents just see that shit and go, “Huh. That’s weird,” and then go about their business. Parents are so dumb sometimes). Anyway, now she doesn’t think the world is filled with pain and trauma around every corner and her art reflects that. The end.
Maya isn’t awake yet so I can’t ask her about this series of art work. Lena and Liberty told me they were all made around Halloween last year. When Maya was 4. Apparently she made up a song to go with this first creation. The picture and the song are both called “Blood is Dripping” and the song goes like this:
Blood is dripping
Blood is dripping
Blood is dripping
The next one is called “Blood Before Halloween.”
And the last one is “The Forest of Death,” but, as Liberty points out, “It’s so pink and there isn’t really any death in it. Well, I guess that triangle’s kind of sharp.” I think she purposely made it pink to point out how our culture’s pre-defined gender roles and expectations for women can be a sort of death. *cough*
A couple weeks ago Lena and Liberty made a birthday card for a friend by using the paint program on the computer. They saved it and when I had a chance, I went looking for it to print it out and I found all kinds of drawings that they’ve saved. And someday I’m going to print them all out and send them to their respective therapists.
Some of them were disturbing with titles like “Blood is Dripping” and “Maya’s Forest of Death.” Some were sweet like Liberty’s “I Love Peoples” and some were just, well, different like this one by Lena. It’s called “Al Peed in Ed’s Room” and it references the main characters from Fullmetal Alchemist.
The text: Ed (off frame): “Why is my room wet?” and Al tells us, “Don’t tell Ed I peed in his room.” My girl is classy.
