The Mighty Jaguar?

Don't worry, it's ok to laugh or think "what the...?". The story behind this is that my oldest son is working on a major Rainforest project in his 3rd grade class. Each student was assigned a special animal, his being the Jaguar. This project is a large part of his grade this term and the clincher is almost all the work is required to be done at school, not home. For a mom who tends to lean on the side of being a complete control freak, this has not been easy for me.

Being that we were out of town last Friday the teacher allowed my son to bring a few things home in order to get him caught up on this class project. After our baseball game tonight (one of 6 games this week!) my son broke out the clay and announced he needed to make a clay figure of a Jaguar. I immediately knew this was NOT going to be as easy as he seemed to think it would be. So as he sat there moulding the clay in his hand and a smirk on his face he laughed about the other classmate who was assigned the Jaguar and how his figure didn't look anything like a Jaguar. As he did this my thought was "oh my son is in for a rude awakening". About 7 minutes into his clay moulding the tears and frustratiion set in and he stomped up the stairs to his room announcing he can't do it and it looks nothing like a Jaguar. He clearly inherited my lack of patience. After some convincing I managed to get him to come back down so he (WE) could work on his project.

As we sat there trying to mould the clay into something that could remotely resemble a Jaguar, my husband sat at the table now he being the one with a smirk on his face and occassionally I would hear a chuckle out of him. I knew what he was laughing at. It has been about 21 years ago when we were both still in high school we had an art class together. Prior to our art class I had only met him once and that was because he was introduced to me by my friend who was dating him at the time. We ended up taking this high school art class together and well...the rest is history. But, during the course of the art class we were assigned a clay pinch pot project which I could not seem to get a grasp. After many classes of me getting frustrated and not being able to get the results I wanted, he ended up doing my clay pinch pot for me. So the irony is that here I sit 21 years later at the kitchen counter working with OUR son helping him with his clay project. Life has a funny way of coming full circle.

Over an hour went by of us trying to make this Mighty Jaguar and well, this is about as good as it was going to get. I admit it doesn't look much like a Jaguar and slightly resembles Tony the Tiger from the Frosted Flakes cereal box. It will do and besides, what more can you expect from a 9 year old boy (and his 30 something year old mom).