Whistler's Mother

Seeing as Madison was my first child, I was anxious she be prepared when she started Kindergarten. I was a little less anxious with the boy and I figure by the time Davis starts Kindergarten, I'll be excited if he knows his name.

But being the over anxious mother I was, I bought the book her school uses for their general curriculum. It is called What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know. I decided I would be the fantastic mom that I am, and we would pick a subject from the book each week, talk about it, do some projects, and maybe even go on a field trip. If I followed through with it, she would be very well prepared to start Kindergarten.

I wanted to start easy, so I picked a section about art. We were going to have a discussion, then a painting project, then we were going to go to a museum. How awesome is that! We started the discussion and we talked about how artists use colors to express emotions. The book had two paintings to compare, the first was Whistler's Mother and the other was a Degas ballerina.


Just like the book instructed, we talked about emotions and colors, and how they work together. It seemed to be going very well. Then I asked her, based on the colors he used, what kind of a woman did she think Whistler's mother was. She told me that his mom was probably a lot like me, and if he had painted his dad he probably would have used the same colors Degas used. She went on to explain that dads are more fun than moms, because dads want to all the fun things that moms never ever want to do.

Nice.

So every once in awhile I try to break out of my Whistler's Mother mold. Yesterday was one of these days. We decided to take the kids on the Polar Express. For the record, it was my idea. Yes, I thought it would be fun to gather all four kids onto a little, and very slow, train. And, shockingly, it wasn't horrible.

The trip was basically and hour and a half. They saw the north pole out the window and Santa gave each of them their own bell. Not surprisingly, Chase fell asleep quite awkwardly in the train windowsill. Awkward enough that one of the elves on the train asked if he was okay. He was.

Now, I'm not saying I'm going to do it again next year. But maybe the year after that, because, I'm fun damn it.