The one where I act like an asshole

At pre-school, Isaac paints and draws and makes projects with his friends. Eventually, these masterpieces come home with him.

Exhibit A:


Since April, when these beautiful renderings started cluttering up my (very very small, with no storage space) house, I have been, well, throwing them away. I mean, generally I wait until Isaac is asleep or otherwise engaged, and I make an effort to put them in the container outside, so he won't see his beautiful depiction of god-knows-what lying forlornly in the trash, but I do throw them away.

You see? I'm an asshole. You should have heard the gasps from the other pre-school mothers when I confessed to trashing my son's artwork the other day.

On the other hand, aren't I just being practical? Had I kept all of these wonderful expressions of my son at age two, we would no longer have room in our house for furniture. I just think it shows better mothering skills to ensure my son has a bed to sleep in, over preserving these crafty pieces of art for him to glance at one day and say, "You kept that? Why?"

Okay, here is a question for all you better mothers out there: Did your mother keep your pre-school drawings? Do you pull them out often and look at them lovingly, comforted in the thought that your mother could never dispose of such things? No? NO? Then why the hell are you saving your kids'?

Running2K posted an idea on her blog awhile back (I'm sorry, I can't find it, or I would link it): she takes digital photos of her kids' artwork and stores it on the computer that way. This seems like a good idea, and would solve my no-storage-space-problem, but then again--it requires organization and time. And effort. I still can't get around the big question: what for?

Other mothers have suggested to me that I just keep the "good ones". But I ask you: what criteria decides a good one? For example, I give you

Exhibit B:


Is this a"good one"? I mean, to me, it seems better than Exhibit A, but then again, I am no artist. Who am I to say? Isaac himself just looked at me funny when I asked him to choose.

I know that I am too practical, and not sentimental enough, generally speaking. This is my personality. So I wonder, will I regret throwing these things away? Will Isaac feel unloved because I don't have any evidence of his artistic prowess at age 2?

You see, all this time you thought my confessions of bad mothering was just self-deprecating humor. But now, the truth comes out: I am, in fact, an asshole of a mother. This combined with the conversation I had with Heidi today ("I am NEVER going to take her to any gymnastics practice at 5 in the morning! No way! It's not like she's going to be an Olympic athlete!") should leave no doubt.

However, now that I have actually taken photos of the artwork for this blog post I suppose I should just continue doing that. It's not like it was difficult to do. And Lance wants me to go to the art store and buy some sort of fancy container for them all. I guess I'm going to have to save them, somehow, after all. Sigh.