Little Men of Mine
Friday, July 21, 2006
Recycling Tip of the Week
No paper with a blank side is thrown out in our house, ever. All of a sudden, Charlie wants to draw constantly. This is the same child who never wanted to draw, color or even do crafts at school. But he's always had this insane imagination, pretending to be whoever or whatever he was into at the time. He would dress in character and even refuse to respond to us if we didn't address him as Captain Feathersword (with my husband's knit watchcap pulled over one eye to approximate a patch) or Clifford (wearing construction paper ears he made at the library) or whoever else he became on a given day.Well, now all that creativity is spilling out on paper. He "writes" entire books. The very first one was "The Crocodile Hunter's Best Adventure Ever," and it detailed the CH's travels to a faraway land where he captures a poisonous rattlesnake. The pages and pages of illustrations were accompanied by words that he would have us spell out for him so he could copy them. These days, he doesn't even bother with words--they just slow him down. Instead, once a book is completed and stapled together, he "reads" it to us.
Now Teddy is getting in on the act. This morning, the two of them were writing "letters"--pages and pages of squiggly lines that they folded up and "delivered" to me under the bathroom door while I was showering. They wrote about 50 of these in around 10 minutes. Now do you see why we never EVER throw out anything with a blank side?
So it's a good thing that I saved every single paper, notebook, syllabus and handout I have ever received from, oh, about fifth grade on. When we moved last year, I brought all of these boxes to the new house before going through them. It had seemed like such a good idea to save all of this stuff at the time. In junior high, I figured there might be something I could use in high school; my high school stuff could only benefit me in college; those college papers and notes might come in handy in graduate school; and ALL of it could be called upon in a time of need once I had a job! Yeah. Well, I went through every book and folder, and anything printed on two sides went into the recycling bin. I pulled all of the notes out of the spiral notebooks, and sold the remaining paper at a garage sale (I'm sure wishing I'd kept all that blank paper now!). Anything with a blank side went into the scrap paper basket.
I tell you, it is cracking me up to "read" Charlie's books with my old literature papers on every facing page! All of my little handwritten notes in the margins, doodles of the name of whomever I was crushing on at the time. I just *knew* I'd need all that stuff someday! I've even gone a step further and started letting him use his school papers (of course, I saved the best ones). It's neat to see the way he progressed in his second year of preschool, juxtaposed with his burgeoning art skills. Now I just need more "gallery" space in my house!
Posted by Jennifer @ 11:55 AM