When a calm, relaxing, blissful photo shoot goes wrong…

You’ve seen them before.  The beautiful photo shoots of well-behaved children, snuggled up all cute in Mommy and Daddy’s bed, surrounding by cozy piles of lovely white blankets and pillows with amazing light beaming in through the windows.  Mommy and Daddy look on lovingly while their angels smile sweetly for the camera and create special photographic memories that will find their way onto the walls and loved for years to come.  These photos are heavenly, blissful, calm.

And then there are the photos of my angels, trying to recreate said photo shoot…

Nailed it.

The Evolution of Kiddie Crafting

If you’ve been following along with us for awhile, you’ll know that we (particularly Griffin and I), spend a LOT of time making things together.  It’s our common ground.  I may not be great at having army battles, or playing video games, I can whip up a boat or an army tank out of paper like nobody’s business.  I love that I’m the one Griff comes to when he has an idea about something he wants to make, or when one of his homemade toys needs to be fixed.  And I totally love that he spends just as much time playing with his cardboard toys as he does playing with his yucky plastic ones.

Here’s the problem though.  I’ve created a monster.

His bedroom is overrun with his creations (I mean, they are everywhere), and I regularly catch him digging through our recycling bin to look for supplies for his projects.  I still feel bad about the day he was rummaging through our paper recycling bin and found several of his own items in there.  Oops.  (Parenting tip #231 – be more careful when throwing out your kids’ stuff).  Much to Ken’s delight, we even have people who save their egg cartons/bottle caps/paper towel tubes/cardboard/boxes/bread tags/popsicle sticks/corks, and deliver them to our house, because they know how much we use.  Hey, it’s art AND recycling 🙂

I totally love it.  BUT, there is a downside.  This is what our kitchen table now looks like full-time:

We now eat on the floor, picnic-style 🙂

I can put up with the mess, but this is what I’m struggling with… He doesn’t need me anymore.  All I am to him is the supplier of the goods and the wielder of the glue gun.  Gone are the days of scouring Pinterest for cool ideas and working together to create something amazing.  Now it’s, “Mommy, you need to buy more tape,” and “can you move?  I need more space.”

Sniff, sniff.

But I love his focus and determination, and how he works towards making whatever it is he sees in his head.  I even love moving all the furniture out of the way so he can make an epic-ly large castle for his G.I Joe figures:

Here is one side of the castle. He drew tanks all over it and put an electric fence along the roof to keep the bad guys out. Cool huh?

I am happy to put up with the crafty messes he makes, and the personal rejection because I believe so stongly in art for kids.  Music and sports come in a close second, but for me, art and creativity will always reign supreme.  It is problem solving, it is co-ordination, it is balancing and calming.  Like exercise for the soul.

And while Griffin is busy becoming an independent artist here at home, I’m not too upset that he may not need me as much anymore, because I’ve got another protege coming up through the ranks.

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce our newest artist-in-training…

“Ooooh, stickers!”

It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?

How important is art in your home?  What kinds of things do your kids like to make?

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Happy Friday to everyone, and Happy March Break to the Nova Scotia kiddies!  We’ll be hanging around close to home next week if anyone wants to come over and build something.  BYO toilet paper tubes 🙂

 

Get Snapping! Your Friendly Reminder to Take More Photos of Your Kids

Confession #1:  Other than the odd iPhone pic, I haven’t taken any photos of my boys since November.  NOVEMBER!!  And those photos were taken in front of a Christmas tree.  Since I’m still on holiday detox, I refuse to look at those photos until next Christmas.

Confession #2:  I’ve been breaking one of my own photography commandments by keeping my camera tucked away out of sight.   Shame on me!  Time to get it out and leave it out.

Confession #3:  I have the hardest time taking photos of my own kids.  Other people’s kids are easier because they don’t know me.  They will (most of the time) do what I tell them to, especially when their parents are not around 😉

So I set out the other day to snap some new pics of my own kids.  Like I said, it had been awhile, co I needed to get some updated shots.  Here’s what it sounds like when I try to take photos of Griffin:

“OK, Griff, let’s try sitting in this chair, give me a big smile!”

“Well, not quite like that.  Open your eyes up nice and big”

“Ok, maybe not…just do normal eyes”

“But you have to look at me…no, at ME”

“Seriously, what are you looking at?  Ok, let’s try something different, show me your best smile…”

“Ummm, ok.  How would you smile if one of your buddies were here?”

Nice.

So it was a bit of a challenge, but in the end, we did get some nice shots:

And then there’s Jace.

Jace is holding strongly to his “NO!” phase and couldn’t care less about my need for documenting every. single. moment. of. their. lives. through photographs.  So capturing good pics of him these days requires lots of time and patience, and a bit of luck.  Not unlike trying to photograph a sasquatch.

I guess this day was a lucky one because I managed to get a few of him while he was distracted by the traffic outside our house:

What he does now when I say “SMILE!”

I love my blue-eyed boys 🙂

If you need some hints on how to take better photos of your own children, check out this post I did awhile back.  It may take a lot of bugging them persistance and a little bit of luck, but remember, any photo is better than no photo, and you will always regret the photos you do not take.  So get snapping!

Oh, one more thing.  You don’t always have to go for the happy, smiley faces.  Sometimes a grumpy/tired/crying face can have huge impact and capture their little personalities perfectly.  This pic of Jace is a great example, it captures his frustration and totally makes me smile because it sums up the pouty phase he is in right now 🙂

Battles – Daddy Loses :(

Nope, not the mental kind – that’s Jace’s territory 🙂

I’m talking about G.I. Joe stuff here.  It’s Griffin’s new obsession.  Slowly fading are the Lego days (although many Lego sets and vehicles have successfully made the transition to the battlefield), and now, we have G.I. Joe.

EVERY night, Griffin sets up his room for a “battle,” and invites Daddy in to have his ass kicked by the Griffin Army.

The rules are simple: Griffin only wins, and Daddy always loses.  End of rules.

It’s not quite a fair battle, and to be fair to Ken, he doesn’t have much to work with.  Here’s Griffin’s setup from yesterday that Ken was up against:

Yes, we are Canadian.  No, you cannot buy Canadian army toys.  So American will have to do.  On top of the usual green plastic army men and tanks, his army also consists of dinosaurs, Ninja Turtles, Star Wars characters and a plastic seal.

And, here’s the best part….this is what Daddy gets for his “army:”

An empty container, some crappy beige army men, an egg carton and a battery operated disco ball.  Sucks to be Ken.

It’s especially evident that the boys play with this stuff too much at craft time, when Griffin comes to me with paper towel rolls and some tape and asks me to make him a bazooka.  Wha?  He’s also talked me into making tanks out of cardboard boxes and submarines out of egg cartons.

I don’t get this boy stuff sometimes.  I try not to look into it too much though because, well, he’s five.  It’s what a lot of kids are into and I think it’s a good thing to give them some freedom to make their own decisions about what toys to play with.

And nobody or nothing is getting hurt…well, except maybe Ken’s ego.

 

What do you think?  Do you allow toy guns and/or army toys in your house?   

 

 

 

Remember This?

Remember this photo from my Facebook page a little while back?

Yup, I love it.  That’s Griff with his class “pet,” Oscar.  Anyway, I forgot that I had a bunch more of these shots and I wanted to share just because they’re so cute.  Oscar has a busy life, going home with a different 5-year old each weekend, so we thought we would treat him to a proper portrait session in the studio to make him feel good about himself.

Oscar in his Halloween costume. Don’t bother asking me what it is, I don’t know. And he came with his own chair too – convenient

I think Oscar’s pretty well loved, wouldn’t you say?

Of course, we can’t ever be in the studio without someone coming in to hijack the session (cough, cough, KEN, cough….).  It’s OK though, we got some cute pics of the boys together.

They’re wrestling – what a surprise!  🙂

Jace was there too, he just chose to write on the walls instead of being in the photos 🙂

Anyway, I’m keeping it light on a Tuesday, hope you’re having a great start to the week.

Ken and his Class 5 Cling-On 🙂