Jetspoons
This morning my kids were being louder and more difficult than usual (if that is even possible when you are trying to get ready, cook and feed them breakfast, prepare everybody’s lunches and get them both dressed in just a little over one hour). But somehow today’s fairy poured some very scarce magic dust on me. The flying sugar unicorns decided to poop ice cream on my head and make me particularly patient. The rainbow shone on my eyes and for some weird reason I felt remarkably happy, blissful, understanding and totally calm… I seriously have no f..ing clue how I managed to pull this one today but I, probably for the first time ever, I was in a very cheerful, perky, even playful mood and somehow it paid off!! If they have been any other occasions in which this rare coincidence of good weather, happy mommy, challenges overcome with joy have ever occurred I certainly have by now forgotten, hidden underneath the everyday rush and daily craze of our lives. Well, this morning some serious magic happened and I don’t know how (although I’m starting to wonder if my husband tried to spike my morning smoothie with a heavy dose of cannabis, Zoloft and merlot).
Aaaaaanyway, after waking up and going for an early 6:00 am run (I mean… can you believe this?!? I’m totally freaking out with myself!) I came home, took a nice shower and started getting ready when… my two adorable little monsters woke up and started fighting: “mamiiiii, G just toppled my Jenga toweeeeeeerrrrrr!!!”, “mamiiiii… I don’t like this pancakeeeeeee!!!”, “mamiiiiii… I want yoguuuuuurrrrrtttt!!”, “nooooo… not this yogurt… this oneeeeee!!!”, “mamiiiiiiii, A has taken my caaaaaaarrrr!!!”, ” I don’t wanna get dreeeeeeessed!!”, “mamiiiiii, I want my pancaaaaaakes!!!”… you get the picture, right?!
I mean, any other day, actually EVERYDAY, that sample is about a twentieth of what I have to deal with within the first ten minutes of me opening my super tired eyes (and that is in itself an insurmountable work with my droopy eyelids). But somehow today I was feeling eerily calmed, happy, cheerful, energetic… even playful!! So I let it all roll over my shoulder and told my adorable little monsters: “let’s make something fun!! Do you want to make paper airplanes??”. As I was hearing my words coming out of my mouth I could not believe it was me who was saying them! Who are you?!? Shut up woman!! Are you out of your mind?!??!
“Yeaaaaaaayyyyy!!!!!” They said… Shoot! Now I am in real trouble! I could not backpedal on my offer or else it was going to get even worse than before!! Sooooo… why not upping the ante a bit more? “Hey! I have a better idea! Why don’t we build planes for our spoons!!! That way we will have planes helping us eat our breakfast!!” Holly smokes!! How many Zoloft pills could my husband have put into my smoothie to make me say such barbaric things?!?? Anyway, I was deep in it by then so without further ado I pulled out some soft foam craft material, scissors, pen and stickers and we set out to work.
This is an old craft that my mom made for me once when I was little and I always remembered. But to pull out the template from memory took some time and trial and error with regular paper. Once I had it down, I was actually pretty easy! So we first drew the shape of the planes in the soft foam.
We cut around the shapes and inside where the little markings were:
Then we inserted the spoon into the inside openings while folding the shape:
We did the tail by interlacing two tiny incisions we made et voila!!! The plane was made!
Since, let’s be realistic, we still were in a pretty tight schedule, I came to my senses and decided to cut short the decoration process by using some adhesive soft foam letters I had gotten a while back to make a Halloween fire truck (that will be someday in another post) and call it a day. They were promised complete artistic freedom to decorate further with as many stickers, glitter, paint, anything they would like after school and they were super happy about it.
I think they were in complete awe of this familiar looking woman that was taking her sweet time to make a craft in the middle of a usually crazy morning. They both were ecstatic with this new character in their lives, and they somehow also became overtaken by some weird spirit of compliance and harmony! They stopped fighting, they both completely cleaned up their breakfast plate and ate with gusto everything they had been horrified by before! They got dressed without a glitch! A goes to pre-pre K and G only attends some enrichment classes twice a week since he is only two and a half, but after the jetspoon craft they both behaved like two adult Boeing engineers on their way to work… it was amazing to watch! I guess sometimes (and I would like to stress the SOMETIMES word here) it does pay off to slow down, chillax, and turn impossible challenging mornings into an opportunity to bring in new and fun games! Just like all those parenting zen masters say!!
P.S. I still cannot believe I pulled this sh…t off!! And to my husband if he ever decided to spike my smoothie: “THANK YOU!”
