Monday we found on sale a printer/scanner/fax that handles legal-size images.  It arrived today.  Now I can print color materials, even posters, directly rather than waiting on the copy shop.  Now I can more easily receive and send faxes; even if they are SO twenty years ago, I am still asked for a fax number often.  Now I scan my favorite of C&D’s projects and pictures.

Like David’s stage picture.  It’s been stuck with magnets on the kitchen bulletin board for a month; Matt and I can’t bear to toss it.

The Wednesday morning after the winter City Dance concert, C&D and I were as usual busy with violin lessons.  When David finished I handed him a sheet of stickers to quietly use while Carmen received her lesson and I took notes.

After a couple of minutes he started bugging me about something.  He whisper-shouted a question that I couldn’t make out because I was wearing earplugs.*  I put my finger to my lips.  He pointed to his sticker sheet and asked me another question.  I put my mouth to his ear.  “Shhhhh.  Later.”  He leaned his face forward and I pulled out the earplugs. 

“Mommy, I need more . . .”  He pointed at his sheet of stickers.

“Later!”

When he began whining and hanging off me like a chimpanzee off a vine, I shot him a you’re-driving-me-nuts look and handed him another sheet of stickers.  I put my finger back over my lips and raised an eyebrow.  David sat down and I turned back to the lesson.  The deal was one sheet of stickers after the violin lesson, but I’d deal with it later.

I forgot about it, of course.  Our violin teacher left, I gave Carmen her own sheet of stickers, and then started to heat lunch.  The house was quiet.  I began to relax.

“Look, Mommy!” David cried as he ran into the kitchen.

Those ballerinas in the middle were from the two sheets of stickers I had given David during the violin lesson.  According to David they’re on the stage of Hamman Hall, where the weekend’s concert happened; the blue above the picture is the curtain, and the triangular shapes hanging over the stage are spotlights (the lights are colored yellow).  Coming off the Hamman Hall stage was a set of stairs, and there are the people in their seats, watching the performance and smiling.

True to his style, the whole thing was made out of three sheets of scrap paper.  I’m guessing he made the stage and cut it out.  Then he figured he needed a curtain, so he glued one at the top.  When he decided he needed an audience, he drew them out, cut them out along with the stairs, and then stuck that on, too.

He placed it in my hands gently and I held it at arm’s length.  “I love it,” I said.

I still do.

* That little violin is LOUD!