As a mom of boys, Kel-Cie tells us that her drawings take on a life of their own.
By Kel-Cie Terpstra Fercho
By Kel-Cie Terpstra Fercho
A defining mom of boys moment happened to me a few weeks back. I was watching my 4 year old niece for the day along with another little girl I watch on Mondays, being a house full of boys I mainly have, surprise, boy toys, and while Zen and B usually don’t mind playing for a bit with cars and Ninja Turtles, on this particular day they were bored. So I whipped out some crafts and coloring pages that I have. We are a pretty crafty household so I have about 6 drawers devoted to this idea, but very rarely markers as I find my 3 year old likes colouring on himself more than he does on the paper. He assures me that is this is, in fact, “a picture for his body” and I should be happy he is sharing with his body rather than mad I have to wash it off. On this day though, Zen hit the jackpot as she found one dark blue marker, it wasn’t long before the boys saw this novelty item and everyone wanted to use it. To prevent the imagined chaos I decided that I would be in charge of drawing things and they could then colour them. B wanted Princess Elsa as she is currently obsessed with Frozen, Zen wanted a new car like her daddy’s but she was going to colour it pink, and it needed a flower on it, and the boys wanted my best renditions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. While they were happily coloring their pictures and I was basking the glow from the praise of how great my artistic skills are, I was haphazardly drawing a stick man surrounded in a field of flowers when Jack looks over at my drawing and exclaims “MOM, did you make him fart!” Umm no, those are adorable fluffy flowers, not treacherous clouds of stench. But it was too late, soon every boy at the table was screaming “make mine fart mom!” and so I went around and drew fluffy flowers A.K.A stink bombs on every Ninja Turtle, surprisingly Princess Elsa passed, and according to Zen, “car’s don’t fart Auntie”. Did it end there? No, no it did not. After the fart clouds, James had to mention that now he needs another Turtle walking into the fart clouds and choking and dying. Where they ever seen these dangerous farts I doubt I’ll ever know, maybe on T.V clouds of dangerous stench kill the bad guys, or the good guys, but here, at the Fercho table, I had to try and draw the line somewhere, “No guys, I’m not drawing that, farts don’t kill people, this is getting gross”. But my kids argue a hard bargain as they explained to me that some farts do kill people, or they could if you breathed it in, especially if you’re under the covers (I may need to have a discussion with my husband about this little tidbit) and if the farts smell really bad then maybe the bad guy will just run away. So the conclusion that was reached was I needed to draw the stinky fart and the bad guy so that the good guy was safe because “whose team are you on Mom!” So draw it I must. And so, as I was carefully constructing my stink cloud around the bad guy for the sake of the happiness of my children, and apparently the safety of the world, I thought to myself, “this is it, this is my defining mom of boy’s moment, I can never erase drawing this gigantic fart from my memory”. And while it was certainly interesting displaying these beautiful pictures on my coffee table for Daddy to see, I would have to say that the highlight of this cheerful afternoon came when Liam declared that his fart picture was “for Grandma”. Oh what blessed day when Grandma receives such creative and inspiring artwork from her Grandkids.
Kel-Cie is a mom to three 3 boys, creator of Kookies and her writing can also be found at Red Deer Kids and Red Deer's Child Magazine.
