Representin'

The X-Man attends a great preschool. They have a nice array of preschool activities--cooking, gardening, riding around on trikes like maniacs, crafty things, and art. The art includes painting, drawing, stamping, as well as other things I'd never want to clean up after. I noticed last year (when X-Man was three) that some of the kids his age where already drawing fairly detailed pictures. Pictures you could look at and figure out what they were: "ah, a mermaid." or "oh, that's a house." I also observed that many--not all--of the artists were girls.

Well, we now have representational drawing happening at school and at home. And it's not totally what I expected, but I'm pretty thrilled. A few weeks ago X and I were drawing together.

Poppy: I'm going to draw a house.
X: I'm going to draw a house too.
Poppy: Here's the roof and some birds in the sky.
X: My house has a big roof.
Poppy: I'm going to add some polka dotted curtains to the bedroom windows.
X: See this circle on the roof? That's a satellite dish. These are the cables that go over here and then connect into the house. Over here, this thing, this is the dryer vent. The air comes out of there when you dry clothes. This is the power line into the house for the phones and electricity.

Well okay then.

Yesterday he was doodling around and showed me what he had made. I could actually tell it was something--not random scribbles, but a real something. I just wasn't sure what.

Poppy: That's a nice drawing X. What is it?
X: (very patiently) It's a chainsaw Mommy. See, this is the cutting part, this is where you hold on. This is the part you pull to make it go.

And by God it was. No mermaids here, but plenty of power tools.