What is it about little kids, socks & shoes? As long as there are socks and shoes around, we have an occupied little boy! Right now Billy most enjoys taking his socks off and putting them on his hands. At first they just stayed there, like gloves, as he crawled around and played with his toys. Now, as he's become more interested in our toy puppets, he uses his socks to "talk" to us and tell us long stories that we don't quite understand yet.

I was adding to our stray sock collection the other day- it's been growing lately- and thought of Billy with his socks. How could I come up with a way for my toddler to transform them into his very own puppets? Remembering some fabric markers I had bought to decorate onesies years ago, I had an idea...

What if we were to use the markers to decorate the socks? Never one to miss an "activity"- as she calls them- Isia wanted to join in the fun. To make it easier to draw on them, I cut a rectangle with a rounded top out of a cereal box to fit into each sock. Then the decorating began! Isia turned hers into a "tree" and asked me to draw a little bird on it. Billy enjoyed decorating his with dots & dashes, before putting it on his hand to perform for us. (And I even had a few spare moments to join in the fun too!)

One of the things that's stretched me, in the best of ways, as a creative Mama is embracing process over product. In the classroom process was my favorite part, but it was essential that it was product-informed process. (At least most of the time.) Now I'm learning that Billy's not only okay with not having a product, he sometimes even prefers it that way. He's known to draw all over a piece of paper, crumble it up, rip it into shreds, chew on a few pieces for good measure, and call it a day. Never having experienced art with toddlers pre-parenting, this was a bit bewildering at first- and still is at times. But all of us are learning together.