blue drawing

Last Saturday most of my day was consumed with moving and photographing the new sculpture. Because I lack any real superpowers, I enlisted the help of my wife Georgie and our 2 year old son Blue to move the 8 foot steel sculpture. Georgie is excellent help in transporting sculptures and, well, Blue was mostly there so we could make sure he wasn't throwing things at the television or chasing chihuahuas around with a hammer. But he did pay attention and he was able to repeatedly use a word he learned in the last few weeks....."scupp-shure".

I'll give you a second to sound it out.

The next day Blue busts out the crayons and positions his paper just so and informs me that he is going to "color" now. And he does. When he finishes he points to the paper and says, "Look, I draw daddy scupp-shure".

I'll give you a second to get over the sheer cuteness of that.

We all know people who think their child is a genius after completing the simplest task and perhaps it is required of every parent to think their child is smart. It might even approach annoying when the accountant parent always points out how their child seems to be naturally good with numbers or the English teacher points out how well their 1 1/2 year old is enunciating her words.

With that in mind check out the drawing he did of my sculpture:


Just like you, I took a quick look and thought, "random scribbles". The brain files opened and caused me to remember the early stages of artistic development in children and how important these random scribbles are in teaching children that they can manipulate the materials and make marks on a page. I told him how good it was and moved on to making elephant sounds and telling him he didn't really need to eat more cake.

But then, like those of you who actually pay attention to detail, I started to notice the similarities the drawing shared with the sculpture. Seriously, look. All the important parts are represented. Not wanting to be one of "those" parents, I kept my mouth shut until Georgie walked in the room and noticed it too and then pointed out that he even chose the correct color.

I'm not saying he's a genius or a child prodigy. I am saying he knows his alphabet, he can count past ten, and he is cuter than most people born in the last twenty or so years.