Big Bee is becoming a mature young lady, and I am loving her sense and sensibility. After observing my mad dash for Christmas presents, she excitedly proclaimed that she will use her savings to buy Christmas presents for Hubby and me. She then probed about what I would like. It is so sweet to have a big girl whose only aim is to make you happy - the glorious rewards of parenting! My heart glows with blessedness whenever I converse with her, and Little Bee will usually follow suit by demonstrating double the love that her jie-jie produces, in a bid to gain my fullest attention - creating friction from a competitive Big Bee! But I always tell my Bees that I love both of them equally, although each will always try to ask me on the side who I truly love more!
Eventually, I told Big Bee that we would truly treasure something that they put in efforts to create. So, on the morning of Christmas Eve, the Bees slaved over a Christmas tree craft to present to Papa. We worked on a laborious handprint Christmas tree, which I thought would be easier for Little Bee. However, I found this craft fairly arduous because I had to painstakingly cut 16 handprints of the Bees as well as manifold Christmas tree ornaments all by myself.
I got the Bees to paint a large piece of paper in fir-green colour the day before (good way to engage the kids in some quiet, focused work when I can read my book in peace!), then I reserved a full day for the paint to dry completely.
Random colouring just to fill the blank page!
The following morning, I traced the Bees' handprints on the painted paper - which was very easy. The tough part was assiduously cutting out the handprints by myself, one by one - all 16 of them! It took me an hour, in between entertaining the kids, before I got them to assemble their individual handprints into the shape of a beautiful Christmas tree!
Thereafter, I thought really hard for shortcuts to this formidable and demanding craft of incessant cutting! So, instead of my original plan of creating paper Christmas ornaments from scratch, I printed templates from the Internet, and got the Bees to colour some of these ornaments instead. Whew! That took a mere half hour!
Busy colouring the Christmas ornaments!
Next came another unforeseen onerous task! That of cutting these teeny Christmas ornaments! As the cutting had to be really meticulous, I had to help both girls cut 28 perfect templates out...which took me another 45 minutes on top of distracting 2 active kids simultaneously.
The easiest job was sticking the ornaments on their respective trees. Both the Bees loved it, and I left them to their own creativity to decorate their Christmas trees - while I nursed an aching right hand!
Finally, I got them to write personalised notes to Papa. Big Bee spent some private time writing and doodling a tender note to Papa, whereas Little Bee scratched in Papa's and her name onto the craft, when I spelt out the words for her (the strategically-placed stickers in her card are used to hide the wrong letters she scribbled!).
The efforts were all well worth it from the expression on Papa's face when both his princesses presented him with their gifts - a priceless moment indeed! The crafts are now hanging in his office :)
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