Now 3 1/2, A is showing an incredible aptitude for most everything she's introduced to (sleeping until 6am is still a work in progress). She's thriving at Montessori school, learning the continents, memorizing songs and manipulating the practical life and sensorial materials in the classroom. She advanced into level 2 at swimming lessons in a single session and got top marks on her gymnastics report card.
But what impresses Josh and I the most about our second born is her blossoming artistic ability. From the scribbles and circles she was drawing just 6 months ago have emerged people and animals with recognizable heads, faces, hair, bodies and limbs. She's even adding necklaces, earrings and shoes to her princesses and sisters. And she's prolific; we're getting 5-10 pieces of self-directed, self-created art a day. She sits down at the kids table, helps herself to markers and paper and draws. And draws. And draws.
She asked me to show her how to draw a spider the other day, and then spent the next 30 minutes hunched over, drawing 10 of them, including a "mommy and baby spider," a "grandpa spider" with a beard/wrinkles, and spiders of various colors and sizes. She cut them all out into roughly evenly sized pages and asked me to staple them into a book. Then she wrote "captions" opposite each page consisting of clusters of the capital letters she feels comfortable writing: N, O, W, H and M.
It's getting increasingly tempting to hang onto her little illustrations, but I remain a ruthless recycler, snapping a pic and burying deep in the bin every last masterpiece.
