She's a Cutter

Alice is a cutter. No paper is spared. I shit you not, from sun up to sun down my daughter cuts.

If it wasn't so damn annoying, it would be cute. Her current favorite pastime is coloring people in coloring books and then cutting them out. She says she's making her own paper dolls. Cute, huh? Which brings me to the so damn annoying part.

These "paper dolls" are everyfreakingwhere!! She takes them in the car. She takes them to nap. She leaves them on the coffe table. I find them under couch pillows and under tables. I'm up to my ears in "paper dolls." So...I did what any good mom would do. I forced her to purge. She was able to keep ten and the rest would go to other kids who aren't fortunate enough to have their own paper dolls. Hehehe. While she was away at school, ahh school, I recycled the scraps. She arrived home that day, shocked the give away pile was gone, I simply explained what happened. "While you were at school, I saw a few kids walking by and I asked them if they would enjoy playing with the paper dolls. They said yes, so I gave them away." Alice bought it. She actually seemed pleased in herself, like she was helping make mankind better. Let me inform you it lasted a day or two at most.

"So Mama. If the paper dolls are on the couch, you can't give those away. And if you find them on this table, you can't give those away either."

An hour later.

"Mama. These paper dolls that I'm putting here on this shelf, these you can't give away. These are for me to keep. And those over there, I'm keeping too. You can't give any of these away."

Sigh.

My world is full of paper barbies and paper princesses. Paper wings cut from paper fairies and glued to paper mermaids.

Do you know what all of this paper cutting leads to? Little shreds and scraps and strips of paper all over the freakin place. There are so many little pieces of paper on every surface and littering the floor, I hardly see them anymore. No, I still see them. I soo see them. They drive me mad. I wanna scream, "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! PICK UP YOUR TRASH, CHILD!!" But I don't, something about stiffing her creativity or something. I encourage her to clean up after herself, knowing she's four and I'm likely to be doing the majority of it myself. As I'm on all fours pinching bits and pieces, I remind myself, this too shall pass. It's just a phase, an adorable, irritating phase in the creative life of Alice.