Happy Birthday Papa!

I got to play full-on SAHD the other day, so took the opportunity to initiate a craft project with JJ. I see all these amazing books, blogs and segments on TV on how to make incredible crafts with your kids and am genuinely intimidated. How will I find the time to come up with ideas? What if JJ’s not into drawing or art or creative stuff? What good will I be to him as a dad?!?

But then I remember he’s still just two, and his favorite things to do still include making messes, touching everything, and destroying stuff. So while he’s limited on how much he can actually create, we’ve got a few more good years of dad/son craft-bonding ahead of us.

The chosen project was to make a birthday card for Papa. Have you ever tried to find a birthday card (or any card for that matter) for a “Papa”? I’ve come across a couple of Father’s Day cards (some of which were for grandfathers) but generally the Papas of the world get the shaft when it comes to cards, books, TV shows, etc. So we had to represent.

I knew I needed to keep it simple for JJ, so it was fun (and challenging) enough to just let him go to town scrawling wildly on colored construction paper with his jumbo Crayons and markers. I then cut them out, punched a bunch of star-shaped holes in them, and strung it up like a mobile. (Bonus: this serves as a fun spelling tool!)

Papa was very pleased, so I’m hoping this will become an annual tradition – with JJ getting more and more involved, and me moving into a more art directorial position. And I guess eventually just the guy who buys the stuff and cleans up.