i hate broken crayons

well, that's a lovely title isn't it?
i haven't even posted in ages and i'm just popping in, sprinkling delight and sunshine around :)

no, really, though, i am only posting sporadically but won't have time to play major catch-up so this is one of those random entries wherein i discuss something currently bothering me.

and the topic of import today is broken crayons.

ugh. i hate them. i don't know why but they remind me of the many childcare settings or schools i was in as a child where "community" crayon baskets or buckets housed only the ugliest and rottenest of broken crayon bits that were so old and petrified, that even though they were really crayola brand, they hardly made smooth and creamy marks on one's paper, but instead, shredded the paper (oh. this is why i also hate newsprint drawing paper but that's another story) and marred one's creative workings with discoloration and impurities caused by the speckles of other broken crayons embedded throughout.

yes, i used to put this much thought into my elementary drawings, forgoing the entire process and choosing instead to sit in horror as i watched the other children eat paste or pick their noses (i picked my nose, too, but i did not eat my boogers. and they did.)

so. much to my dismay, even though i bought the damn fattest crayons i could find, many of them met their fate yesterday. it started by allowing my 21 month old to color at the table with my five year old (oh. yeah. pea turned five this month) and the three year old little girl that i watch. big mistake. huge. before i know it, sprout is throwing the crayons, wildly about. they did not like falling on my tile floor, oh no, they did not. the big fat ones were no match for the tile and three of them promptly broke. i had some other not as fat crayons on the table, as well, and well duh. the tips of quite a few of them are no longer attached. insert big, pouty face here.


then, in the middle of all this crayon carnage, the little girls' mom arrives early to pick them up. because the three year old was in the middle of coloring and is very, um, i would say, unlikely to behave when her parents are around, she picked up her coloring pages and started grabbing as many crayons as she could fit in her fists. being that they were fat crayons, she only had about four but she dropped them all when i told her she couldn't take them with her. nooooooooooooo.................


so. now i am the proud owner of a basket full of broken crayons. in my home, they are.

i suppose it's not the most tragic thing and i can even fool my brain into being okay with the situation. i don't have to color with them, right? i don't even have to look at them except when i'm making sure nobody is eating them (or purposely breaking more).

from now on, coloring will only take place on the kid-sized table so the crayons have a shorter falling distance, if i even let the kids color at all.




(fwiw, i also have stockmar crayon sticks and blocks. i have let the five and three year old use them, however, i am nervous that the beeswax that chips off will get all over the place and ruin our carpet and my husband would freak. i am so far from even pretending to be at all waldorfy, at this point. i know.)