Maybe I Should Just Recycle Those Cardboard Tubes

As a follow-up to that last post....

The next day, while I was rushing around getting ready for work, Quynh took it upon herself to keep busy making some more art, like she does nearly every day. We pretty much always have tape, glue, kid scissors, construction paper, and markers strewn all over the "art table" in the playroom because they are in constant use.

I ran out to the garage to throw purse, lunch bag, and coffee mug into the car and, when I returned to the house to start yelling at  suggesting to the kids that they put their shoes and jackets on, Quynh was wailing and bleeding.

She had apparently decided to use her kid scissors to poke holes in cardboard tubes the way her excellent role model of a mother had done with adult scissors the day before.  And it didn't go well.

She's fine, of course, and it only took 15 minutes of me:
begging
pleading
cajoling
(pausing to tell Tai to get ready or he'd miss the bus)
empathizing
arguing
(pausing again to send Tai running down the street alongside the moving school bus)
bargaining
reassuring
and finally bribing  (remember this for next time -- skip all that other stuff and start promising candy right away)
for her to let me put a band-aid on it.

The worst part is I can't find a way to blame this on Minh or anyone else.  I set the bad example and then left the scissors and cardboard tubes within reach.  I practically dared her to try it.

 

 

Fun with TP tubes

For the past several weeks we have been saving every empty toilet paper tube for some unspecified future art project. So this weekend I used one to make this:

Of course I did it under the guise of "doing and art project with Quynh," but she and I were not exactly working together. It was more like she was asking me to draw with her and I was way too focused on my mobile to be bothered. Sometimes I get carried away.

Then Tai joined us, saw what I was working on, and started scolding me, "MAMA!!!  Those tubes are for KID art projects!!!"

Whoops.

Luckily we had seven of them. Three for each kid and one for me.  I don't think it's too much to ask that I get ONE, is it? 

Even though the tubes had been piling up for weeks and no one was using them for anything, seeing me make use of one suddenly inspired both Tai and Quynh to create something with the others. (Or maybe they just figured they had better use them before I took them all). 

Quynh's Mobiles:

Tai's sculpture: