Day 851 - Works of Art

During those days when I am exhausted, the one thing I can do to keep Emma busy is to give her some crayons and paper. And if that doesn't work, I tell her Crazy Grandma is going to visit and then she ends up dusting the entire house for an hour.

There are a couple of things I find very interesting when Emma does her art stuff. First of all, she figured out the correct way to hold a crayon/pencil/scalpel. I think because of this, she is able to control her coloring/drawing/incisions with more precision. Secondly, she exudes an enormous amount of focus and concentration. When she is coloring, there is nothing that could pry her away from it -- well, maybe a cookie. Finally, it really looks like a few of the drawings she has made actually looks like the thing she was trying to draw. Take a look at these drawings she made on her Magna Doodle:

A face.

A fish.

A man biting a raccoon.

As for her coloring, Emma gets fixated on certain shapes or colors and enjoys repeating the pattern over and over again. Here are two examples of what I mean:

If there is a large canvas for her to color, like this pajama, she likes to use different crayons and create a patchwork of colors. She has done this type of coloring on other large items like balloons, hearts, and The Biggest Loser contestants.


And here is a collage that shows you what I mean about her coloring a shape over and over again. When we gave Emma a new Sesame Street coloring book, she ended up coloring all of the round noses of the characters. We don't think this means that she's going to have OCD when she gets older, but we're no longer going to let her watch As Good As It Gets.

What about Andrew, you ask? Although Andrew colors along with Emma, he currently doesn't hold the same focus and interest in it. His idea of coloring is grabbing a crayon, marking up a page with random lines and scribbles, and calling it a day. But give Andrew a paintbrush and palette, and he really shows some promise. I don't want to be one of those naive, proud parent, but his latest painting is quite impressive.