Busted!

Goober always brings home a lot of art projects from daycare.  I love that her “school” is constantly engaging them and allowing them to create items and explore with paint, markers, crayons, etc.  However, this presents a bit of a problem for me.  I started out saving every little scribbled on piece of paper that she ever touched.  Treasuring them like they were the most priceless Picasso and DaVinci paintings in the world.  And to me they really are!

However, I soon ran into a problem of what to do with all these works of art.  The fridge was full, the baby book was overflowing, my desk at work was decorated, and the folder that I had been stashing the extra artwork in was beginning to look like it was vomiting red and blue renditions of puppies and dinosaurs. 

As much as I hated to, I realized that I would need to start being a bit more selective about which artwork I kept and which I had to reluctantly part with.  Anything with hand and footprints?  Totally keeping those.  Yet another coloring book page or paper plate animal?  Maybe. 

But Saturday I made a mistake.

I was cleaning the house and sorting through some of the artwork that had inevitable accumulated on the table.  Among these was a blue car (Goober LOVES the color blue.  Everything has to be blue!).  Not being a hand or footprint, I quietly discarded the car and promptly forgot about it.  Later that day Goober had just finished a sucker that was a reward for using the potty, and being the good girl that she is, she went to throw the stick away.  Suddenly I hear “Oh no!  Mommy look!  Car in trash!”  At first I had no idea what she was talking about, but then she comes running in to me with the most pathetically distressed look on her face and holding the blue car. 

Busted.

I immediately gushed “On no sweetie!  How did that get in there?  Let’s go put it on the fridge instead”.  Looking slightly mollified, we head into the kitchen to put the blue car in a place of honor on the fridge.  Meanwhile I am feeling incredibly guilty (how was I supposed to know she was in love with the blue car?) and also laughing at the situation at the same time.  It was so adorable how genuinely distraught she was over finding her blue car in the trash. 

And now what I once thought of as trash I will treasure forever, always remembering the story that goes with the blue car.