Warfare involving construction paper and glue sticks

Last night Jason and I sat at the kitchen table and worked. Zeke had gone to bed, and it was getting late, and we were tired and cranky. But we had work to do. What if our work product didn't live up? What if we were ridiculed?

What were we doing, you ask?

Making posters for Zeke's school. Specifically, a family tree and an "all about me" poster (the "me" being Zeke, natch).

For the family tree, I cut out a piece of green construction paper to look like the leafy part of the tree, and cut out a piece of brown construction paper to make the trunk. Then I printed out pictures of Zeke, me, Jason, our brothers and sisters, our parents, and our grandparents, and arranged them so that branches connected the various parts of the family. I labeled all the pictures, then cut small leaves out of the construction paper and we glued them over the parts of the tree that didn't have photos or labels. Then we glued the tree onto a bigger piece of poster board, and Jason did nice lettering for that.

(click on the picture for a full-size view. I only included people whose pictures I had, so we've left some people off, like my paternal grandparents. I also didn't do any of the cousins, because that would have taken far more time and effort than I was willing to devote to this.)

So that I could work on the "all about Zeke" poster.

What the fuck has a 10 month old done that warrants a memoir-type poster? Seriously.

I went back to the computer and printed out more pictures, of Zeke as a newborn, of me reading to him, of him swimming with Jason, of the dog, of pears ("Pears are my favorite food. Yum!!"), of Australian and American flags, and of his red car. I glued the pictures on another huge piece of poster board and then wrote little captions.

"This red car is my favorite toy. Mommy and Daddy let me ride down hills in it. I go fast!"

"This is my dog, Max. He sleeps alot. I like it when he gives me kisses."

"I like it when Mommy reads to me."

"I like it when Daddy takes me swimming in the ocean."

Blah blah.(I think the pears picture is my favorite part. So dorky.)

It ended up looking kind of cute, though I wasn't happy with it. Too slapped together, not enough symmetry, sloppy looking borders.

This morning I was telling my mom about it, and how I had been all nervous and obsessive, worrying that our posters wouldn't live up to the rigorous nursery school standards of The Cole Academy.

"Yeah, that sound like you," she remarked. "Poor Jason, getting dragged into your craziness."

Turns out, our posters were about 3 times bigger than any of the others.

When I told Jason, he growled, "fuuck yeeeaahhh! Suck it, other parents!!"

Maybe he and I are more alike than I realized.