Craft Room

I heard William come in and jump on my bed and say, "Mommy, I need ANOTHER thing of tape!"
Now, a wise mom would have gotten up and investigated. It was 7 a.m., and William had woken at 5:50. I had told him he could be awake if he didn't bug mom. He had wanted to work on his 'crafts.' I said, "Okay."
I hazily remembered him asking for some more tape somewhere in my slumber, and therefore his request for a third tape dispenser did catch my interest. (BTW, I love it when the hazards of using tape shows up on the boy... although I am tired of having to take small bits of tape and paper off of my feet.)
I sighed. What is a mom to do? Go clean up the mess now? It was obviously too late for that. Any old mom knows that a small mess is as hard to clean up as a big one, so I said, "There's more tape in the cupboard by the front door, honey," and rolled over to make my reality go away.
Originally, William's room was the master bedroom. But, since we didn't have a true TV/play room, we gave him the larger room to play in. Well, that's been great until now. He now insists that he needs more table space to do his crafts, like his origami boats that he folds and colors for people. He reinforces the folds with tape. He's such a boy. Glueing just takes too long. It's the first lesson in 'bodging' something together, I guess. My tape supply has been taking a huge hit.
He has moved to our kitchen table, right by the big picture windows (so all the Japanese can see as they walk past) to do his 'washing paper' work. It goes something like this: You use paints, or markers on paper. Then you use water on it, and then absorb it with other paper. It looks interesting, and he loves it. It reminds me a bit of his Grandma Sue's funky watercolors.
He has had his markers taken away. That was a bigger mess than anticipated when he used them as 'paints.' There are no pictures of that event, because I was too busy trying to clean stuff up before it became permanent color on the expensive wall paper.
He is now skilled in using tape for a whole variety of things, like envelopes, and 'bags.'
My favorite, was him excitedly announcing to Tim as he came through the door last night, "Do ya know, I made a CRAFT! Wanna see it?"
Tim said, "Yes, I'd love to, what did you make?"
"A ball!" William crowed.
Great. I could have easily thrown it away when I thought it was just a balled up piece of paper. Now, I know it's a lovingly made 'craft.'
Ah... but as any 'crafty' mom knows, she can usually convince the child to send his lovingly made articles to unsuspecting relatives. There's more than one way to clean up the mess around here!