Creativity?!?!

This morning my 2 1/2 year old daughter had a bad case of what I call "toddler PMS". Kailey's sensitivity alarm was set to go off at the touch of a feather. She loodged a series of complaints, each accompanied by wailing, flailing, and falling into a heap on the floor. Her cheerios were floating on the wrong side in her cereal bowl; I had mistakenly screwed Cliffords head onto Barney's sippy-cup body. And heaven forbid, I had committed the unpardonable sin of cutting her toast lengthwise rather than diagonally. I knew we had a long day ahead of us. So I decided it was time for some art therapy. It's amazing the difference a little crayon and paper make. Things immediately looked up and before long I was enjoying the peaceful ambiance of music coming from my CD player as I hauled out more sanity saving supplies; stickers, glue, and markers. It was all coming out of the closet to rescue my morning. I needed some quiet time to make phonecalls, and I was on my way to professional productivity! Three calls later I returned to Kailey. She had made a beautiful body of "water" a.k.a. Glue Lake, on my kitchen table. She has also covred every square inch of her kids table with red marker and, while tracing her hands several times, also had clearly experienced an epiphany. Hey? Why just trace my hands when I can color them in solid? Why do toddlers always think that if a little is good than alot must be better. Of course my husband tends to be that way to, especially when he is trying to cook with new spices! Anyway, even after soaking in the tub and a good scrub down her fingernails still remain a lovely shade of frakenstein green. I had a friend give me a magnet a while back that said "Cleaning house while the kids are young is like shoveling snow while it's snowing." I think secretly we are all hoping that our little Picassos will be the next Norman(or Norma, in my case) Rockwell. How else can we find some sense of of purpose in the thousands of hours we spend cleaning up after creative childhood endeavors? I also heard once that Steven Speilberg was very hard to get to sleep as a baby. Can I hear an amen from the masses of bedtime-routine-exhausted mommies out there? Later when Steven was a teen, his mother let him fill her pressure cooker with a dozen cans of cherries in heavy syrup to create a special effect for one of his early home movies. His mom said she found cherry bits in her kitchen for the next eight years. And the rest is movie making history! So the next time we wade through piles of coloring books, buckets of crayons, and globs of glittered glue, let remember that God may have a creative genius cooking there. And it may only be another 20 or so years until we find out for sure! So in the meantime I decided that i am going to envision myself at the Oscars or Pulitzer Prize dinner in a sequined evening dress, hearing my grown up child tell the world, " I owe this night to my mom, who taught me how to make something great out of my messes." Until that night I will continue to pray for patience and continue to invest in a well organized craft closet!

JAMES 1:4 "But let patience have her perfect work."