Young Rembrandt

Miss Jess and I are enrolled in a weekly art class at my favorite art studio in Campbell called The Art Beat.  I have enrolled each of the girls in classes here since I am a huge fan of art.  Jess loves to color and since I am a big believer in sister equality (trust me that will come up in a blog post) it was her turn to dawn her smock and get dirty.  Sharing the time with Jess while painting a tray, gluing wads of paper, whatever it is, happens to be the highlight of my week.  But I can tell from watching the other parents they aren't feeling the same bliss I am.

So heres the scene...Across from us always sits the older couple with their first child. The daughter, although cute, is too young for class.  The Mom quickly picks up whatever tool we are using and gets to work.  Even when the kid takes an interest and wants to paint, that Mom is quick to correct, re-direct, and basically hover, sapping all possible fun out of the creative process.   The father came last week and tried to gently mention to his wife that they should just let their daughter do her own thing and have fun, to which the wife gave him a 'shut your mouth' look and continued on with her painting.  It's hard, especially being a type A control freak parent, to let your kids pick up a paint brush and paint an entire ceramic clown black.  The line between helping and just pushing them out of the way and taking over can be so fine that you don't even realize you have crossed it.  So I do feel for these parents, but I must say it's painful to watch.  I want to scream 'hey if you won't let your kid paint a rock, will you let them try to tie their own shoes, drink out of a big girl cup?'.  Come on now. 

Next to them you have the Mom that is irritated just to be there.  I can't for the life of me figure out why she even signed up for the class.  She comes in perturbed, moves into crabby, hovers for a while at testy, and then finally settles in a general disdain for life itself.  Just a general rainbow in a bag.  As you can imagine, the kid picks up on all this and spends a good part of the class crying, sniveling and being generally unhappy.  Now I have felt all of those moods, however, this class is at 9:30 in the morning.  I'm usually not at that level of disgust until closer to the witching hour of 5:00 p.m.  So I'm not sure what the whole story there is, but it's a great example of how your kids can really pick up on your energy.  I have always said that my mood can make or break the day in our house.  It's not always the case for sure, but if I have slept poorly or I have a migraine and am feeling grumpy the kids are all over that negative energy.  If only I had a Yay pamphlet I could slip this gal. 

The last in the group is a nice woman who is expecting her second child any day now. She is tired but at least trying to enjoy her final days as a Mommy of one. She at least appears to be clued in to how special this time is and how soon her whole life is about to get a whole lot busier.  I can remember doing a class in which I had Alex in Baby Bjorn while trying to assist Gabby.  Talk about a balancing act, literally.  I still laugh sometimes thinking about how when I just had Gabby sometimes I would find that I wasn't able to get that much done in a day.  I was always wondering how these mothers of multiple children did it.  How could they do their families laundry and put a nice dinner on the table?  And what about those Moms that worked?  Funny now that I think about it.

So in essence, I guess you could say that at different points in my parenting life I have been all of these parents.  I am by no means a great parenting chief that is all knowing, but it's interesting to watch these parents are a different stage than I am at.  I'm sure if I hung out with parents that had kids in college they would be listening to my stories shaking their heads too.  Just more adventures in parenting that we all go through I guess.