Annie's Art

Filed squarely under "Things I did not anticipate being fascinated with" is the development of Annie's artwork. It's essentially blown up this year, and in the last three months in particular. Her teachers don't really know what spurred it, but every day she comes home with droves of little pictures she's sketched of various magical and everyday things. She's also just started drawing things in the air, asking me if that "looks right" and I can tell there's so much whizzing around in that little head of hers.

I love getting these little glimpses into how she sees the world and what's important enough to her to sit down and draw it for us.

Annie at the beach in the water.

A "newcorn" (unicorn-note the horn)

Mommy in a bikini

And her family (left to right, Mom, Dad, John and Annie)

It has really showed me that she SEES everything. When I broke my toe, drawings of me had the little support shoe. When we were at the beach, drawings of me were in a bikini (it's a fairly accurate representation). But her drawings also seem to be skewed by how she sees others. For example, she has started drawing me with "red lipstick and high heels" (shown in picture above). Now, those of you who know me, know I am not really a red lipstick and high heels kind of gal. But somehow, that's how she sees me. Or maybe that's her subtle way of saying she wants me to dress up more. No idea. But either way, it's fascinating.

I love that, for the most part, she will draw our family together. Or she will draw herself with her cousins and her brother. And everyone is always smiling or doing something fun. So while her pictures aren't always 100% accurate in the details, I think they are a good representation of Annie's life in general. And based on her pics, it looks like a pretty good life, and that makes me very happy.

Priorities

Apologies for the radio silence. There's been an unbelievable amount of sickness going on over here since the beginning of February, when John started a new school and the winter bugs seemed to be in full effect.


Since that time, there has been only one week (of 12 weeks) where both children have gone all five days to school, or I haven't gotten called to pick one of them up for having some random ailment (pink eye! hives! fever! ear infection! vomiting!). So there has been a lot of trips to the doctor and urgent care. In the midst of all this, one of my employees left, which doubled my work load. Then we hired a new person, so I essentially had to cease working and help train him. so it's been exciting around here. Thankfully, the dust seems to be settling at work. The health of my children remains to be seen, but hopefully that will be under control soon.


Annie has basically become a pro at the doctor's visit. She sits down, lifts her arm for the temperature reading, takes big breaths while they listen to her tummy/lungs, holds perfectly still for the checking of the ears. John, on the other hand, is not quite so enthusiastic. He starts shrieking the second the ear-checker thing comes out and pretty much doesn't stop until the doctor/nurse leaves the room. My theory is that he doesn't yet experience the thrilling rewards of the doctor's office that his sister has learned to appreciate: the sticker and lollipop.


With all the doctor's visits, Annie has amassed quite the collection of stickers. We were discussing them last night after our most recent trip to urgent care. She's been there so much that she's become somewhat of a collector, only wanting the rarest and most unusual stickers.


Annie: I like my Aurora sticker I got today. I hadn't seen that before. I didn't like that thing they put on my finger though.
Me: Yeah, that's to make sure your heart is ok. They put the same thing on Mommy when she was in the hospital having you and John.
Annie, sensing a shared experience: So what kind of sticker did you get when you were at the doctor having me and John?
Me: My prize was I got to come home with a wonderful baby.
Annie: So....no sticker?


Here's to hopefully a sticker-free spring for us!