valentine’s day

We spent the week sloooooowly working on Valentine’s Day cards for his pre-school class. j helped affix the stickers, but he wasn’t terribly interested the whole ordeal, except for the tape. Also, he was distracted this week by the easel he got for Christmas from his aunt and uncle (thanks--it is fantastic!) but we hadn’t had a chance to put up until this week. We just got new carpet in the basement playroom and painted the ceiling, so we’ve spent the last month rearranging things and finally it is done.

j loves, loves, loves his easel, especially the whiteboard part. He likes to draw pictures of our family, especially when I draw the circles for faces and he gets to add hair, Daddy’s beard, and “extraordinary long arms” to our bodies, just like Mr. Tickle has. Since he doesn’t like to sit down much to draw (this was confirmed when we spoke to his teacher last week), I wonder why the easel is so appealing. I think it has to do with the fact that he can erase on the whiteboard. He loves to erase and start over again. I can understand this urge.

But my favorite part is when he switches up what the eyes and mouths in his pictures look like. No, Mama, you gotta be tired. And he gives me dark lines for my eyes. Mama, I gotta be happy. And he erases the horizontal line he’s drawn for his mouth and draws a grin in its place.

I’ve also been trying to spell words for him to see. He’ll shout out letters and I write them on the whiteboard. He’s starting to understand how to spell his name, I think, though he insists that there is both an N and an M in it.