The Artist

Jack's been drawing a lot, and it's fun to see. He fills page after page with circles and broad, slashing lines, in different colors of crayons. The other day he drew a sun, an honest to goodness circle with squiggly lines coming off it. I was pretty impressed, and still am.

But if I get too close to Jack when he's drawing, his interest in drawing is generally replaced by his interest in ME drawing. For a while it was us: "Draw Mommy....Now draw Daddy....now Jack. Where's Kate? Now Grandpa..." Then it was Backyardigans characters, over and over again. Then it was airplanes. Lately, although he hasn't actually watched "The Jungle Book" in several weeks, it's been Jungle Book characters: "Draw Magheera." (I know it's Bagheera, he calls him Magheera. I try and correct him, and he says, "Well. I call him Magheera.") "Draw Mowgli. Is that Mowgli? Mowgli doesn't have that much hair. Draw Sher-Kahn..." Recently it's also expanded into characters who only exist in the Jungle Book of his mind. "Draw Sher-Kahn's Daddy. Now his Mommy." Pause. "Now, over there. Draw Sher-Kahn's grandpa...."

The pictures typically end up a wild mishmash, with no blank space left. "Draw my puppy......draw my other puppy.....draw my Teddy bears.....Draw their babies....."

When they're done, he wants to hang them on his wall over his bed. There was an anxious moment a couple of days ago when we ran out of tape. He says, "Can we get tape and go put it on my wall?" So we get the tape and head upstairs, and he jumps onto his bed and picks a spot -- among the ever-dwindling free space -- and we tape the picture up there. It's quite a collection right now. They make him happy; I think I might have caught him saying good night to them one night.

On a totally unrelated note, Jack came running into Kate's room tonight when I was putting her in her sleeper. He was wearing his pajama pants and nothing else. He made some comment about how we have muscles, and while he did so he kind of flexed his arms and legs. I looked at him, laughed, and repeated what he said, flexing back. "Muscles?" I said, still laughing.

"Yeah, muscles!" he said, laughing back, then giving an even more exaggerated flex, and raising both arms high over his head. "GRRRRR!"

Perhaps we've been playing with the superhero action figures a little too much lately.