Lately Evie has just been on a drawing tear. It’s like she’s bound and determined to go through a ream of paper, churning out pages by the second. On the plus side, there are few uses of paper that are more appropriate (it certainly beats printing out directions or something). Not only does it keep her occupied for long stretches, but I can actually see her getting better.

It’s kind of interesting how her drawings of people change over time. They’re still circles with arms and legs, but little details here and there are filling in. They always have hair scribbled on top now. They used to not have any mouths, now they always have big smiles. Sometimes they get scribbles for teeth. She used to always do eyes as dots, but lately there are a few that have “eyeballs” on them. She always draws herself with blue dots for eyes. (“This one is you daddy, he has a red pimple on his nose!” – it was like looking in a mirror) There are other things too, like when she was drawing a “mommy and her little boy”, she drew a big person and a small person. So she’s experimenting with spatial relationships.

She’s also been writing a lot. She’s been able to write her name for a long time, but even that has improved lately, with better E’s and now she’s working on better V’s (she used to draw them with 3 lines, like a squared off U). She’ll get a new letter and work on it for awhile, like drawing entire pages worth of L’s.

She likes to “write” books which are a collection of a couple of pages of drawing, or write letters, which are pages and pages of letters repeated in a random order. The other day she was writing letters to her friends and putting them into a basket in Oliver’s room, which was the mailbox.

The only thing is that she doesn’t hold the crayon the way you should hold a pencil. Don’t mention it to her though! She gets very frustrated. She just wants to do her drawings or write her words, and not be bothered by holding the crayon any certain way. It’s not really a big deal, I just hate for her to learn how to draw all these letters, and then have to learn it again a new way later. However, for the moment, she just wants room (and paper) to draw. And I am happy to give it to her!