One thing I find challenging in this whole parenting gig is balancing out my loathing for commercially-licensed products and my inherent laziness.
Take Valentines, for example.
Philosophically, I support the production of lovingly hand-made valentines. But I am lazy and it's just so much easier to buy them even if they do have Ariel or Iron Man on them.
My daughter desperately wants to make home-made valentines. She did last year, too. Last year I bought plain pink and white cards, a zillion foamy heart stickers and some markers. She spent about 25 minutes making the first valentine. She stuck on stickers, embellished it with hand-drawn pictures, addressed the envelope TO ELIJAH WITH LOVE FROM AISLIN and added it to the pile. Well, it was a pile of one at that point which I'm not sure can really be called a pile but the intention for it to become a pile was there. There are 30 kids in her class so you can see how time-consuming this project was looking to be. The second and third card she spent about 10 minutes making. A little more efficient there. And then...she got a snack, went to play with her toys, noticed her sister was doing something fun....and left a pile of foam heart stickers, blank envelopes and half-drawn cards on the table.
Two days before Valentine's Day she was still only three and a half cards into a 30-card project.
I ended up running to Target and found some Valentines that were just generic, no licensed characters. I probably should has taken that opportunity for her to learn a lesson about finishing what you start. But she was only in Kindergarten and I just didn't have the heart (heh heh) to let her show up at school with no valentines.
This year she wants to make her own cards AGAIN. Dummy that I am, I once again have assembled blank cards (white this time so we can use them for something else if they don't end up as Valentines), stickers, and envelopes.That plus a little construction paper, scissors and glue and we have some LOVELY cards to make!
She has been banned from markers because she keeps leaving them on the floor where her two-year-old sister can find them or using them herself to write things like WATER NASHUNS on the floorboards where she thinks I won't see it. So no markers this year.
I've told her that there will be no last-minute trips to buy store-bought valentines. This is it. Hand-made or not at all.
Aw..who am I kidding? I'll probably be the one making the last 20 cards myself. Looks like the loathing for licensed products wins this time.
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