Of Our Little Artist

Our little girl loves to draw.  Whether it's markers, crayons, colored pencils, sidewalk chalk or her finger on the iPad, she adores creating with color.  Until today, most of her work, like that of her peers, involved primarily straight lines and unrecognizable blurs of squiggles.  When it was her turn to trace Mommy (or Daddy, or Aunt Dia) with chalk on the driveway, there were generally no other marks than the random dashes etched at certain points before it was pronounced done.  And, somehow, her work made sense to her.  And, being that she's two, it looked beautiful to us.

Today, however, while I did a little work in the church library (or tried, unsuccessfully, rather), she knelt on a cushioned chair in front of the white board, red marker in hand, and went to work.  At just the right moment, I looked up in time to see a blank circle on the board, drawn by her hand, and the pronouncement that he needed eyes (at which point, she placed two tiny red dots) and a mouth - and then, ever-so-carefully, she started at one side of the circle and drew a shaky line across.  Our daughter had just drawn her first recognizable figure.  And, like every milestone a child ever seems to make, it was like she'd been doing it all along - no big deal, Mom. 

I suppose it's because, to her, her art was always logical.  But to this concrete-minded mother, this little girl had, overnight, become a budding Rembrandt.  Someone give that girl a medal!  Oh wait . . .


This is why I carry a camera in my purse (that and the fact that I don't pay for data on my phone, so, though it has the capacity to capture a moment, it doesn't really do much from there) - she did this all by herself!

And because we like him, too, it's time for a Gratuitous Photo of our Son: