creating

Ayla and Ruth - notice the eyelashes.
Zeke laying on back with legs up and holding a toy. Jake on his knees playing with Zeke.
Ayla's "drawing station". Easel, Box on the floor with paper, new and drawn on. Pictures on the wall.
The new porch!

A few months ago we had a sometimes frustrated little girl as she would start to draw something and then suddenly scribble the page up. The ideas and desires to draw pictures were in her head but Ayla didn't have the motor skills yet to put to print what was in her bright little mind. Now we have a tree killer. And what I mean is Ayla literally will draw easily 50 pictures a day sometimes. We actually have been gathering scrap paper like crazy for her to use so all you tree huggers settle down : ).

It really is quite something though to see how far she has progressed. Maybe all kids do but whatever, the bigger point is how much she LOVES to draw. Sometimes she'll disappear to the "toy room" where her drawing station is. There she will lay on the floor and draw for 30-60 minutes page after page just wrapped up in her world. For a long while the pictures were of the aforementioned Arthur the Aardvark. Usually the face with a stick body. But now we're seeing family members (Arthur's and ours) with full bodies, arms, legs, hands, feet, hair, eyebrows and facial expressions. Also in them the people are doing different things - standing, sitting, laying, kneeling, playing. There's nothing like when she comes running out to you with new creation held high, eyes lit up with excitement to give you her latest drawing. I'd take everyone to work but then I'd need to own a stadium to put them all up. : )

While Ayla has her creations I was able to "create" something of my own this summer as well. In early May we had a sinking, large concrete stoop off the front of our house. Now we have a cedar porch that I built. As it's been a busy summer I just today finished the grading underneath and staining. Hey, let's just say I'm kind of a stick figure builder in terms of skills, so this was like a full body, facial feature thing for me as well. : )