An Artist for a Day...

Luke is not a crafty kind of dude. He will ask to color or paint occasionally, and I will spend 5 minutes getting out all the supplies, setting out the paint, paint brushes, water, markers, crayons, and coloring books. Then he will proceed to paint for 1.4 seconds, color about 3 small lines on 3 different coloring book pages, freak out multiple times when he gets marker on his fingers, and then decide all he wants to do is sharpen the eraser side of pencils in the electric pencil sharpener. It is maddening.

So you can imagine my utter shock and awe when I came home from running errands a few weeks ago to find that Luke had drawn actual pictures on the chalkboard while I was gone. He hardly ever colors on the chalkboard, but for some reason Luke decided to show us that day what he is capable of. Phil tells me that Luke said to him, "Daddy, I'm gonna draw you some pictures," and just started drawing. Phil wasn't really paying attention, but when Luke called him to come see, Phil was totally surprised to find actually drawings. He asked Luke to tell him what he had drawn, and Luke pointed to each drawing and explained what it was. Phil labeled them so that I could see everything when I got home.

Upper left: Daddy

Upper right: Lemon (as in the bad-guy lemon cars in the movie Cars 2)

Lower right: Tree with a falling acorn...notice that he drew the ground, too!
(The star was done by me and was part of the "Luke is 3!" sign for his birthday)

 I can not describe to you how amazing these drawings are to us. It's not that we think Luke's art is any better than any other 3 year old's art. In fact, there are probably lots of 3 year olds who have been drawing faces and shapes for ages now. It's just that this was so totally out of the blue for Luke. He had never done more than uninterestedly scribble a few lines here and there before moving on to something else entirely. Suddenly he was drawing shapes and faces and falling acorns??? What?

When I came home and freaked out over what a great job he had done and how much I loved it, he could not have been prouder. I took pictures and gave him hugs and kisses and did everything I could to let him know how awesome it was. 

He has since to do anything like it again. He's back to disinterested scribbles and sharpening pencil erasers. Now I am wondering if it wasn't just a practical joke that he and Daddy pulled on Mommy for funsies. 

 

Oh well.  At least I have the pictures and the memories!