Travelingjenny

If you've been to my house lately, say in the past three years, you may have noticed a few million pieces of child artwork scattered around. Our fridge is plastered with drawings and hand-painted magnets. There are piles of artwork in the loft, the guest room, the master bedroom, and even on the poor little art table. The truth is, I'm a softy, and I can't bear to get rid of this wonderful evidence of my children's creativity and imagination. And I'm just sure that someday, when they're older, we'll spend an entire afternoon pouring over these art archives, studying how their skills progressed. Pretty much every day, each one draws a picture, either for me or for a friend. These pictures are thoughtful and sweet (see Tess's canoe, above). Tess always writes her name (so cute, with squiggly S's!) and Grace generally writes something as well, adding to the charm of her artwork.

The bottom line is, my two budding artists are prolific, and I love every single thing they create. Well —almost everything. Occasionally, after they've gone to bed and I am trying to unearth myself from the chaos of the day, I may recycle a drawing or two on the sly. Only the ones that weren't their best efforts, or that were supposed to mean something but I can no longer remember what the meaning was. This doesn't seem to be a problem, as the girls rarely ask me what I've done with a certain piece of art. But today, I had the full recycle bin sitting in the hallway, waiting to be taken out to the garage. Tess walked by and noticed one of her recent drawings in the bin. She nearly cried. "Why did you throw it away? I wanted you to keep it," she said, in her saddest little four-year-old voice. I told her I had no idea how it got in there, but that she better pull it out so that I could do a better job of hiding it add it to my collection.

Can any of you tell what this is? Because I have no idea.