MamaStories

Years ago, in 2004, I put together a (literally) small “zine” called The Puffin.

It was a zine for family and friends, inspired by Dan Price’s awesome Moonlight Chronicles and Danny Gregory’s Everyday Matters blog (before he became so insanely popular).

I just happened upon the original .jpg version of The Puffin - I no longer have a complete copy for myself, all 50 went out the door - and laughed myself silly!

As a way of illustrating what my life was like before I became a mom (very academic - okay: nerdy!), I thought I might share some of the pages with you.

Here are the first couple of pages that make the draw-for-your-life pitch and the first page of the rest of the journal, which puts the drawing philosophy in practice. Enjoy (click on thumbnails to see original size)!

1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

More will follow.

Ah, no… I don’t draw in my journal anymore. I still do draw, in Amie’s Map Book, our communal Drawing Book and on the occasion of all our crafting, of course. But no longer in my own journal. Why? Sigh. I can only speculate. The best excuse I’ve come up with is that, once drawing “vivified” (jump-started) my journal again, I quickly fell back into my old journaling habits, which are back to being prolific and energetic, but drawing-less. I do miss it though, not so much when I’m writing, but when I’m rereading my journals.

This just in:

Rock-n-Romp, a kid-friendly rock show series, is coming to Boston. R-n-R founder Debbie Lee is coming up from D.C for the Boston kick off and she is bringing Neal Pollack, the author of Alternadad with her.

They will perform with Boston Music Award nominees the Bon Savants and the psychedelic rockers Wonderful Spells, who promise to play for you, live, the kind of music you listened to BEFORE YOU HAD KIDS. This while also keeping your kids engaged: they can watch the band, experiment with instruments, dance or just run around and hang out in a safe and friendly environment.

And Neal Pollack is going to read from his all-too-close-to-home book Alternadad. There will be more literariness from author and illustrator Jarrett J. Krosoczka, who won Child’s Magazine “Best Books of the Year” in ‘05 for his book Punk Farm.

WHEN: Sunday, February 24, 2008 from 3pm-6pmWHERE: Great Scott, 1222 Commonwealth Avenue, Allston, MA 02134

TICKETS: $8.00* in advance or $10* at the door. *Each ticket admits one adult and one child. NEAT: An adult must accompany child and a child must accompany an adult. Get tickets via Rock-n-Romp Boston or Ticket Web.

See you there, perhaps?

In the meantime the Manush House is finished. I decided not to glue the bathroom/kitchen and the staircase onto a cardboard sheet. It would make it more difficult to move the doll house around and take it places (if ever Amie wants to do that).

Here’s the whole house (so far), with some of the proud owners taking advantage of the new facilities (note the Mama in the bathtub, the Baba in the kitchen!) and their guests, Mickey and Minnie, asleep in the living room/bedroom.

Reader Anja had suggested I send a little story about the doll house to Mothering Magazine. I was considering it when two days later said magazine arrived in my mailbox and there already was a story about making a fairy house out of trash. What a coincidence! It’s great to know more people are doing this!

In the meantime I had also sent word to Annie’s HomeGrown - the staircase is made out of three of their boxes. They loved it and guess what: they will feature the house in their next newsletter! Everyone sign up!

(*) I am happy to have made this doll house almost entirely out of trash: boxes of all sizes, aluminum foil, plastic containers and styrofoam, as well as some pictures out of magazines all bound for the recycling bin. Only the paint, glue, staples, tape and ink were new.

You can review the progress on the doll house (in chronological order) here, here, here and here and lastly here.

More pictures:
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That’s it for this installment of the Manush House. Amie is already lobbying for another addition: a bedroom. I am thinking: a piano! The living room needs a grand piano. I’m on the lookout for a good box.

Some scissor work on the IKEA catalog and the Manush kitchen and bathroom are fully equipped and ready for their new occupants. But where are they? Oh, they’re at the zoo.

Yes, there are even curtains!

What remains is fixing the whole thing - kitchen/bath unit and staircase - together onto a large cardboard sheet that will give it some stability (right now the box falls over too easily). Once it’s totally done I’ll try to take some better pictures.

We’re not really into big festivities round here - it comes with being far away from family, and Amie isn’t into presents and all that (yet). We spent some lovely days with friends in NYC. They’re into big get-togethers with hour-long conversations, heaps of good food and frequent bursts of laughter any time. You find yourself in the middle of that wonderful city but you just can’t make yourself get up and go places!

Perceiving a definite slow-down on other blogs, I decided to take a little time off too. The free moments here and there I devoted to the “bari” or “badi” - as Anja called it, in Bengali: the little house I was making for Amie, I mean the Manushes.

I spent more time on it than I planned to, for several reasons: the paint was such that it needed several coats, I changed the colors and design midway through, I got very, very into it and, much to my surprise, Amie let me work on it once in a while. It was very relaxing, in the evening after she had gone to sleep, to spend 15 minutes with it. I’ve never been a knitter, but I guess this comes close.

Baba Manush proudly surveys his domain from his new steps.

I used two Annie’s Homegrown boxes: Cheddar Bunnies and Mac’nCheese. Seeing how heavy-footed those Manushes are, I made the staircase very strong, with reinforcements and lots o lots of cellotape!

Then I decided to change the color scheme

It needs a little more work, some finishing touches. Hope to report back on that soon!

It started snowing here on my way to pick up Amie from her daycare, around one. On the way back she found it so peaceful she fell asleep in the stroller (it’s a ten minute walk). It really is rather magical and eerily calm when those flakes start coming down.

While she naps I stole a moment to put the first layer of paint on the interior structure and the large furniture. Don your hard hat and your smocks, please!

Phase II: First layer of primer

Isn’t that this week’s issue of the New Yorker? Why, yes it is! Honestly, who has time to read the New Yorker anymore?

Then I stole a moment to write you this.

And now I’m going to steal some more moments to finish chapter 8 of my novel.

The day after Anja commented on the dollhouse in the background of a recent picture, Amie took a sudden interest in it. It had been sitting on that ottoman for months…

The first thing she asked for was steps. The Manushes couldn’t get into the house! So I made steps, which the Manushes now use very carefully and meticulously, almost like a toddler unsure of her step(s)…

Here they are, with Bob the Builder, soundly asleep in their beds made of blocks.

Then Amie asked for another house. “I want one more house,” she said. I proposed that we build two more rooms - I knew of just the right box! I asked her which those rooms should be. Well, Amie reasoned, they already have a living room and a bedroom (both rolled into the above), so they need a kitchen! What the second room should be she couldn’t think, but she agreed when I proposed a bathroom. She also pointed out the kitchen should be on the groundfloor, the bathroom on the second floor.

Construction has started. Please don your hard hats!

Phase I: structure and plumbing

The bathroom: bathtub and toilet

The idea is to make the whole house purely from recycled materials, preferably from things that were on their way to the trash.

Just getting Phase I completed was nervewrecking, because Amie wanted to help and got very interested in my scissors (that’s why I didn’t take out my Exacto knife, you know) and the stapler. A good opportunity for a safety talk!

We’ll keep you updated as the works progress!

It’s like an early Christmas present! Just when I was going to subscribe to American Elf to catch up, James Kochalka launched the brandnew American Elf Supersite and the archives are free! I laughed so hard at some of the strips I got cramps in my side! (That Bonus Elf seems interesting, though, so I am still going to invest.) 

I once tried to write a daily strip about our daily life. But I can’t draw for peanuts (witness here) so, being a perfectionist, I got more than a little frustrated and strapped for time. Maybe my life wasn’t interesting enough, either, before we had Amie. Now that we have a talking toddler, I would have more grist for the mill but… there is so much else to do!

Watching this video of Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on education and creativity at TED - hilarious, insightful, engaging and (ringing) so true - and reacquainting myself with Danny Gregory’s website and books on drawing, I realized there was a gap in my approach to art and creativity with Amie.

When she draws or paints and asks me to draw something too, I always respectfully decline for several reasons. I don’t want to influence her lines with my perception of things, I don’t want to impose my sense of realism on her, and in the end I like to have a drawing that is wholly hers.

But then how will she see a drawing being made?

Ah!

So I’ve instated another book: the story/drawing/scrap book. It is a sturdy receptacle of stories told and pictures drawn by Amie, spontaneously or when asked. And every other day, I sit down, right there next to her or nearby (”what’re you doin’ Mama?”) and draw something in it.

I copy something from her favorite picture book of the moment, or I draw an object in the room or something imaginary. When she asks, I explain to her what I’m drawing, and let her watch me make lines and add color. If she wants to contribute to the drawing, she is welcome to.

This is a typical page: a note of what she said that day about the names Stella and Elisabeth, and then my copy of Marie-Louise Gay’s Stella. Amie draw some of Stella’s hair.

Stella by Mama and Amie (hair) (Tombow felt pens):

Amie was so inspired, she wanted to draw Stella too, “on my own page by myself”.

How neat to have those two interpretations of Stella next to one another!

Here’s the page we did today:

Can you see how it is a collective effort? She chose the images I should copy, did some of the coloring in, and in the frame in the bottom right corner drew her own Pooh Eating Honey.

I interfere in only two ways: (1) I stop her from blotting everything out with black and (2) I ask her to not push my arm, pen or the book while I’m drawing.

Happy Halloween!

Depending on whether we make it to the party at Amie’s daycare tonight, there will be more pictures tomorrow. In the meantime, a bonus: