My son the Sticky Tape Monster

I am officially renaming my son, yep seriously I’m off to the place where you can legally change the name you were born with, he is no longer known as Adam in our house, he is officially and soon to be legally known as “the sticky tape monster!”

OK  I am not really going to rename him (not legally anyhow), but to me he is my cute little sticky tape monster. This decision was not reached lightly, no I had plenty of time to consider this name. Let me explain. Adam, oops sorry I mean ‘sticky tape monster,’ let’s shorten that to STM, has an obsession with sticky tape, and anything and everything that I throw into my recycling bin. He has become a mini designer of all things great and small, and well sticky tape related.

My house is currently decorated with all sorts of weird and wonderful creations made of scrap paper, envelopes, milk cartons, tissue boxes, cereal boxes, and my favourite . . . the old toilet paper rolls. I literally throw something into my recycling box and it magically disappears, then reappears as a new and wonderful creation!

I found a whole stash of my recycling the other day underneath his sister’s desk ready for use at any given moment! It is not just me benefiting from his beautiful and rare art pieces, his sisters Aspen and April also have their rooms decorated with his work, my husbands desk is full of STM’s creations, and they are now being extended to people outside our house. The grandparents, his fun Uncle James (you might recall from the cordial scam,) and now his best buddy at Kinder, Lucas. I am sure Lucas’s mum was thrilled when her son came home with his new gun made from a toilet roll, some scrap paper and lots of sticky tape!

“Just breathe” I tell myself! There is no room for my OCD of cleanliness now I have birthed 2 girls that love to craft and a son named the sticky tape monster! It wouldn’t really bother me so much if I wasn’t walking around the house getting random pieces of sticky tape stuck to my socks, or worse on my butt! And on top of this he has discovered a love of cutting. I recently attended a parent information night at his future school, it was sweet we sat on the tiny coloured chairs at the pint sized desks and played some of the learning games that Adam, aka STM will be playing next year, when one of the teachers started telling us how important it is to allow your child to use scissors! She insisted that it is crucial for their brain development and fine motor skills. Well I looked at my hubby and could tell we were both thinking the same thing “Adam (STM) will have no problem nailing that requirement, oh no our son will top of the class at cutting, and may even receive a star pupil award!” He may not yet know how to read, or tie his shoelaces, but he can cut! We will be proud parents.

Even though this is something his future teacher may be happy with, it is something I can’t quite feel as chipper about when my floor is covered DAILY in the tiniest of tiny pieces of paper! I am not exaggerating either, he gets an A4 piece of paper and chops and chops until it looks like confetti, Oh light bulb moment!!!!! I could bottle it up and sell it for weddings, I could make a fortune! Or is that bad for the environment? And possibly getting your child to work at age 5 is illegal, and well just morally wrong! Bad mother, bad, bad, bad mother!

So in the interest of being a ‘good mother’ whatever that means? I put up with this mess, with this chaos and the sticky tape on my socks, I am not saying I don’t lose it from time to time, or need several cups of coffee and some deep breaths to get through the day!

For now I wilI try to smile sweetly and thank him for his masterpieces and just hope one day when he is a famous artist, or architect that he looks after his dear old mother! Brainwave he could call his business STM Architects!

Thanks for joining me, love Mackenzie xx