Eeyore

Thing 1 has long had a real soft spot in her heart for Eeyore. Not his attitude, but the little blue donkey beanie baby that used to sit on top of my monitor from way back when I was a Working Girl. One day shortly after she started walking, she saw him there, wordlessly gestured to him, and then took him for her own. He had been with me for a long time, I was a little attached to him too, so I expected I'd be able to pick him up when she was done carrying him around, and he'd resume his place on my monitor.

But he endured. He became the first fierce attachment she made, one of those things that your kids CANNOT sleep without. She called him "My Sister Eeyore." She still has a much loved Eeyore in her bed each night.


So when they announced in school that they were having the annual "Sculpt a storybook character" project for the library, I wasn't at all surprised that Thing 1 wanted to sculpt Eeyore. (Thing 2 didn't want to participate, that's more Thing 1's thing.) I had heard about a foamy hard drying clay that is easy to work with, and bought her some. She worked on him for several days, and this is the proud result.


I'm embarrassed at how lazy I am not to have taken pictures with my real camera, just with my phone. And I did go so far as to push the bags of sculpting clay out of the main part of the picture... but none of my close ups are any good, they're just varying levels of blurry. So her attention to detail goes undocumented. The black bird on the wire above Eeyore's head is a robin, you can't see his red breast or bright blue eyes. And the reeds growing around the pond are a little hard to make out, as are the baby ducks. You can't see the screw she used to attach his tail. I argued for a nail, but she decided it's a screw. Parental involvement in this is supposed to be minimal, the only advice I gave her was on how to make brown from red, yellow, and blue clay. Suffice it to say she's very proud of her creation, and is hoping for a prize.

I went in with her to drop off her sculpture at the library today. I wanted to judge the competition. Each grade is judged by itself, and I must say there weren't many real contenders on the 2nd grade shelf. I think she's probably a shoe in for first place, but then I'm not a judge. I've seen judging for these sorts of events make very little sense. But that would be Eeyore-ish of me to say to her.