Handprints on My Heart

Luke’s 2013 hand print creation (why can’t I make myself toss this thing?!)

I spend my days wiping foreign substances from appliances and walls, so you would think that I would have an aversion to hand prints. The truth is, I can’t get enough of them. My fondness isn’t for the gooey tracks leading from the counter to the couch, but to the crafty kind immortalized on construction paper. Out of necessity I’ve been making feeble attempts to cut clutter in our house. We’re just running out of places to stuff things we don’t need. But while I can easily part with many of the kids’ ‘masterpieces,’ anything with a hand, finger, or foot print is generally safe from elimination. My print obsession stared with Luke’s first Christmas when we pressed his chubby foot in clay and proudly displayed it on our tree. We’ve done the same for each subsequent baby. Each December we crowd around the ornament box excited to compare how much they’ve grown since their first Christmas. (I wish I could post a picture of all 3 ornaments, but they’ve been once more relegated to the attic. Lest you think I have it all together, we’ll probably still be using our Christmas dishes on Loey’s birthday… which is in July.)

I’ve noticed that while the minutes of each day at home can be loooong (like when all 3 kids are super sad at the same time), each year really does move faster than the previous one. I suppose hording hand prints is my way of freezing time – if only on paper. I’ve recently become a late-night Pinterest fanatic – because who can sleep when there are fantastic craft/food/party/random ideas to be discovered and never attempted! As a tribute to my love of kid prints, I created a hand print craft board on Pinterest (lots of repinning – not my ideas!). I see a hand print tutu in Miss Em’s future! 🙂