What Do You Keep?

Part and parcel with children in school is artwork they bring home and proudly show you.   Or in the case of my son, freaks out about our interest in his work initially only to then, after having it sit in the house for a bit, tell us it's okay for us to look at it now.  

That's not entirely fair about my son; some of his work he brings home he is immediately and urgently interested in having us look at it.  But he is his own worst critic and much of what he completes at school, for whatever reason, time being the biggest factor, he wasn't able to do the job he wanted to do on the project. 

My daughter is interested in her artwork, but a lot of the time she forgets about it in her backpack and when we ask her about it when we prepare for the next day of school, she's grown detached from it and isn't as interested. 

On the whole, there are those pieces each child loves and has a special feeling about and there are other items they aren't as attached to.   There is one thing though that they both feel strongly about and that is that nothing should ever, ever be thrown away. 

And this presents an issue for us and most other parents: what to keep and what to "misplace".   For instance, tonight I made some calls about three items my daughter brought home.  On one page she put about fifty dots of green paint from a paint dauber in no particular order or pattern.  The second item was interesting, but it was clear her braillist helped her do most of the assignment as it was meant to represent something specific.  The third piece was an interpretive cloud three-dimensional work.   That one went in the attic. 

Someday we'll go through what we've kept and likely cull it a bit.   We've kept more than we expect to long term, but that is mostly because if the children are going to ask about it, we want to be sure we can bring it back out for them.   They never do though, children move forward far more than they look back. 

The Big Boy Update:  My son brought home what amounts to a doodle today from school.  He left it on the counter in the kitchen with the words, "What do you see?  There are five pics."   I got three and my husband got three. 

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's, "little sausage" as she called her big toe the other day is injured.   It was run over by one of those electrified children's cars.   She was trying to push it off the curb when it jolted forward (or something along those lines, I still don't know the exact story) and her toe was run over. It was jammed and her chiropractor helped in that regard.   It's getting better, but now the joint higher up is bothering her more.   I told her it was going to take time to heal.   I refrained from reminding her how shoes were sometimes helpful at keeping your feet safe.   She needs the tactile information her feet give her.