A lovely evening...

Tonight, after dinner, the children were wanting me to read so they could work on handicrafts. Noah was whittling, and the girls wanted to do embroidery. Micah was milling around and decided he wanted to embroider too. Typically I shy away from giving sharp implements to 3yo boys, but he found a plastic needle and was insistent. I kept putting him off while I got the girls set up with patterns and embroidery hoops. Part of me hoped he would forget... but he didn't.

Noah kept whittling away. I actually tried to fob Micah off onto Noah for a whittling lesson, thinking that would be more interesting to him. (Yes, I asked a 3yo to go play with a knife... I obviously wasn't thinking clearly...) But Micah wouldn't budge, he wanted to use thread and a needle and he wanted to "make something".

Don't ask me why, but there were some paper plates on my living room floor, the kind I keep around for crafts (but not usually in the middle of the floor). I remembered that I had a small awl and decided to punch holes into one of the paper plates and make him a simple picture. I remembered that earlier this week he was interested in the story of Noah and the Ark, so I punched him a little boat.

I kind of forgot about his project in the flurry of requests for threading, knotting, untangling, etc., from the girls. Noah even came and shoved his whittling project in my face for inspection from time to time (he is making a letter opener from a twig from our Christmas tree this year). Micah was happily sewing on his little plate, and I didn't stop to inspect because he seemed thrilled with his productivity.

When the dust settled and everyone was done with their handicrafting... we had settled for listening to Adventures in Odyssey in place of my reading aloud since I was so busy with assisting all the projects... Micah showed me what he had done, completely unassisted... all I could do was smile...