The Clever One

Shortly after the Nannies in China placed Maggie in my arms, two women sought me out and very pointedly told me Maggie was "clever." To my American ears, 'clever' means smart in a sly way, and I wondered how a baby could be 'clever'. Of course, as I got to know Maggie, I did think clever was an excellent word to describe her. Then earlier this year, I was having something translated and I found out 'clever' in Chinese means good with her hands. I almost fell over. Because those Nannies saw something in Maggie as an infant that I've had the honor to watch unfold. I'm attaching three of Maggie's creations. As a point of reference, she's created each of these items in the last two weeks. In no way did I help her. She did all the creating, cutting, gluing and the drawing herself.

The first one is a drawing of a magical castle, with a princess and prince fairy flying toward it. (Her words, not mine.) In the sky is a kite and a flower, because it's windy.



The second picture is of puppets. She designed the puppets, drew faces on them, then made them a boat. (Unfortunately, the boat suffered a fatal collision with the glue stick.) I then was forced to create a puppet stage, which she decorated. All day she held shows.





This last one is the one that is most amazing to me...it's a simple mosiac of two robots. One is hard to see because it's in the same color paper as the sheet she glued him on. He's actually more detailed that the big one. On this project, she cut out the pieces, laid out both robots, then glued and colored them. Even wilder is she told me before she started she wanted to make robots, I handed her paper and markers and she got the scissors and glue herself.

There's really no point to this entry, no lessons learned, no punch line. Given that Maggie's still a month shy of four, I have no idea where all of this creativity will take her. My only hope for all of this is that she continues to love creating and that we find the right path to nurture it.