Kids and crafts

This morning it poured down with rain, a red-letter day in our desert land, and we joined up with some other tots from the large online Ventura playgroup in which we loosely participate to bake some Valentine's cookies.

I am not a 'crafty' mom. At all. I do cook and bake with my children quite frequently, and J enjoys this greatly. However these ventures never involve rolling pins, sprinkles, varying colors of frosting - except once, at Christmas-time, which merits that type of fanfare. Usually I keep baking pretty straightforward... At least for now, while the kids are this little and mess and intricacy don't seem to equal the pay-off. So I was all for going to someone else's house today to roll, use cutters, have ready-made colored frosting to slather around, and the like. And it was great.

My lack of craftiness becomes apparent from time to time when I interact other moms. My friend Annie down the street, for example, decorated tiles with her kids (the exact same age as mine) in Dec and made them into Christmas ornaments. They used not just paint, but glue and glitter too. God help me, I would never do such a thing. In our house, crafts consist of coloring, play doh, and just recently painting - using a set of paints we acquired from a package mailed by Nona, mind you.

It's just not my thing. I would rather play legos for an hour with J, or read books or do puzzles, than do a non-basic craft for 15 minutes. In fact, in my whole life, I can think of exactly two areas in which I am remotely 'crafty' - scrapbooking (which I've done since I was 16) and knitting. Not exactly age-appropriate for pre-schoolers...

I'll just have to trust and pray that their relative dearth of home-based crafts doesn't scar my kids for life...!