First Year Mom: Creating

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Creating

Jonathan loves to draw and paint! The word used in kindergarten for this artistic occupation is “yetsira” – Creation. So Jonathan loves to “create”. He is always showing me his efforts from kindergarten, some truly astounding, which I keep in a neat folder for his (and my) future enjoyment, but the quantities are just too engrossing – he draws every day and I just cannot keep up. Most of his drawings and scribbling will need up in the recycling bin downstairs, but I have learned not to remove recent acquirements, as he just might look for them… A Jonathan scribble needs to grow old before it end its career.

In December2012, we purchased a new washing machine. IT was delivered and unpacked and the carton became free to use. I naturally allowed Jonathan to keep it for a while. With a friend of my husband’s helping and Jonathan giving strict “construction” instructions, a door and windows were cut into the carton house. Jonathan than took colored pens and decorated it from inside. He drew the view on the windows (you can see the cloudy sky through the windows) and flowers on the walls and pictures too (you hang pictures on the walls do you not?). The result was truly homey and cozy, its was a true pity I could not fit it (Jonathan of course invited me to visit…I had to decline due to my size…).

The carton ruled our living room (and the tent was forgotten for the duration) for about 3 weeks, with me moving it out of the way all the time and tolerating it. However, once Jonathan has finished the house (thus completed the creation process of it) he lost interest in it almost immediately. He played in it maybe once of twice, and eventually, after seeing that he no longer paid any attention to it whatsoever for more than a week, I removed it.

Jonathan’s creativity is not limited to pen and paper. An opportunity presented itself the other day to get creative in the bath tub. I foolishly left the bottle of shampoo low on the tip of the bath tub. Jonathan emptied half its contents into the water and created enough foam to last him an hour in the water! He used it to “paint” the bathtub glass walls and called me to admire his work. I was not pleased to see what he had done (and I scolded him for wasting good shampoo) nor was I happy to realize that getting the soap out of his hair was depending on my replacing the water entirely, but the bubbles were so enticing, that I joined him in the tub! Jonathan realized this effect, and the nest day emptied the second half of the bottle into the tub in the hope that I repeat my gesture from the previous evening. I did not…but my husband did! The next day we did not leave any shampoo lying about.

His recent creative effort has been focused on making his own costume for the Purim festivities. Purim is the time for dressing up in Israel. A costume an cost 200 ILS (approx 40 Euros, or 70 USD) with ease, especially if one purchased a branded outfit (international or local children stars), so for economic as well as principled reasons, I encourage Jonathan to make his outfit. What started as a game with a smaller carton, soon evolved into a project – Jonathan would be dressed as a robot. Jonathan decorated it himself, I gave helpful suggestions and eventually we put together quite an impressive robot. The week prior to Purim the robot was in our home and Jonathan offered friends visiting a chance to play with it, the boys ran turns in wearing it, almost tearing it (my husband saved it at the last minute).

This trend continued also the day he was to come dressed up in kindergarten, and by then Jonathan had the big carton robot as well as smaller robot ears and a robot mask (both made of thin aluminum baking pans) to share and swap. At the end of the day the carton robot was torn from overuse. Jonathan was saddened and I promised to tape and fix it at home. I did so, but it has been lying in our living room ever since, it’s hay day well over. Makes me wonder what he will dress us as next year, this year’s costume was a resounding success in more ways than one (combining creativity with social bonding).