Emily, You Crafty Girl!

So, reading the last post you may remember that upon hearing that we would be making a log book, young Emily squealed, "Arts & Crafts, I love Arts & Crafts!" I am sure you were all thinking, "there goes Steve, exaggerating again, how could a kid that young know that she loves Arts & Crafts?" The answer is, no, I am not exaggerating, Emily had already experienced the joys of "hand-made" crafts.

You see, one of the things that we did in the hospital with Joseph was make plaster casts of a hand print and a foot print. Emily did not want to be left out of the fun, so she politely asked if we could cast her hand and foot as well. Not knowing her love of abstract art, and her desire to become "fully" involved, we naively said, "Yes."

Emily seemed calm and was excited to begin, but as soon as her hand hit the cold casting gel, she decided a hand print just wasn't good enough. She wanted to do a WHOLE body casting. This, unfortunately, was not what the rest of us had in mind. A short struggle ensued and we were able to "cast" her hand. It turns out that we were not as successful as we had thought, but Emily was more successful than we could have imagined. While her hand cast was no good, in her brief moment, Emily was able to make a complete cast of her sleeper. In addition to casting her sleeper, she also managed to cast the couch, the social worker who was assisting us, Joseph's ventilator, her mother's hand, one of her Aunt Mandy's shoes (and that's quite impressive), and $1.32 in loose change. Suffice to say, stricter controls were in place when we went to cast her foot.

So when I say that Emily loves Arts & Crafts, what I mean is, she really gets into it; which I hope explains the clothespins.

What we didn't know at the time was that this moment was the quiet before the storm. Emily is an Arts & Crafts dynamo!

If only this picture could truly express how quickly things got out of control as Emily realized what was happening, even in her sleep!

This was the "first attempt" at Emily's plaster hand print mold. Don't worry, we did make another one that turned out a little better.

Cleaning up the mess that Emily made while making her hand mold.

After having experienced what happened during the hand mold catastrophe, we were more prepared when it came to her foot mold.

Creating her foot mold went off without a hitch.

The finished product!

When we got home and inspected the outfit she was wearing, we noticed just how talented Miss Emily is at her Arts & Crafts. She was making a hand mold, but where did she get the gel medium? On her arm? NO, she got it on her arm, and her legs, and her back, in her hair, and on the INSIDE of her outfit!!!!!

(Note, this picture is only of the mess done to the outside of her outfit. We noticed the mess on the inside after we washed her outfit the first time and realized that there were spots we had missed, but who would have thought to check the inside? This outfit had to be washed at least twice, I think maybe three times, before it could be worn again. That takes a special kind of artistic talent.)

Who could forget this Arts & Crafts extravaganza from our last post. Here, Emily is making a letterboxing logbook at her first gathering, but you could tell that from the photo, right?