MamaStories

We are big fans over here of Rosemary Wells. We adore the Mother Goose book she did with Iona Opie, but our absolute favorites are the Voyage to the Bunny Planet books. There are three of them, but we only own The Island Light (about Felix) and Moss Pillows (about Robert). I stumbled upon them at a garage sale. The other one, First Tomatoes, I haven’t been able to find.

Amie was at first fascinated with Felix being held down for a shot and having to drink medicine that tastes of gasoline. Now she is more interested in the bunnies’ real problems: Felix being sick in front of the whole art class and his parents forgetting to kiss him goodnight, bespectacled Robert’s need to be alone in a house full of rowdy cousins, arguing adults and noisy television. She totally understands that they “need a visit to the Bunny Planet”. She has even started speaking of going there herself (”When I was a baby and I was sad, Janet came and took me to the Bunny Planet” - Janet BTW is the Queen of the Bunny Planet).

DH was not so keen on the stories: child bunnies under stress escaping to imaginary worlds that wholly cater to their fantasies! But I like the quirkiness. I even say they actually demonstrate great compassion and understanding. And I love-love-love the illustrations.

Today Amie made a double-sided drawing and dictated a letter to Rosemary Wells requesting that she write more Bunny Planet books. We’re putting it in the mailbox tomorrow.

Robert

Felix and Janet, the Queen of the Bunny Planet

As you can see, the tadpoles are back again, exclusively. Those bodies were only a blip. And for the most part the mouths are back inside the faces. But look at the ears now!

The first O on the last page is the Bunny Planet. Then it says “Felix” and “Janet” - she is so into “writing” now!

Rosemary has her own website with activities, coloring pages and bunny money.

Amie has been making strides with her drawing.

She has been grouping little tadpole figures together on one page - my suggestion, that we use the “white” on the paper a bit more. She has also been mixing the mouth inside with the mouth outside the face figures.

But overall, the figures had become formulaic, as you can see from the following drawing (notice her signature in the bottom right corner):

Perhaps she thought it was time for a change. Chaos ensued:

And:

At first I couldn’t figure out what was happening, and neither could she! She couldn’t explain what was what in these protozoic creatures. Until, a couple of days later, I realized (wondered) that she was probably struggling with the body. Because this is what happened next:

- Is that a body, Amie?

- It’s Sulley’s body. And there is Boo.

As you can see, Sulley has a body, “big hairy arms” and lots of “hair all over”. Both he and Boo have feet (Boo has shoes too), ears and hands.

Yes, that’s Sulley’s smile underneath his body. The big part was at first the head, with the smile underneath. But then she reconsidered and added a new head on top!

She wasn’t totally convinced yet, though. For instance, Boo’s body, she said, is that smaller circle inside her face. Still, her next drawing was quite clear:

Sulley again, with his name “spelled out” on the top left and her signatures below it.

Is this the end of the tadpoles? She’s drawn a couple more since then, but they might be stragglers, like the hapless Neanderthals, doomed to extinction.

The pressure’s on when there’s a Big Girl (6-year-old L) watching you!

And despite Baba’s efforts, the smiles as you can see still go underneath. And she still hasn’t made up her mind whether she’s a leftie (like Mama) or a rightie (like her Baba).

The “look L is eating all her vegetables!” didn’t work, though. Amie has sharpened her logical thinking on the vegetable issue. Last week:

- You have to eat your vegetables if you want to grow and become a big girl.

- When I am a big girl, then I’ll eat my vegetables.

- Noooo, you won’t become a big girl if you don’t eat your vegetables [the speaking in emphases is contagious]

- [Thinks for a moment] Then I want to stay small.

Amie took special care with this one: it’s for a friend who is ill.

We talked in advance about the plan to put two figures on the page, and how it would be best to turn the page horizontally (landscape) so they would fit. She began with the head of the left figure, taking care to place it sufficiently to the left so there would be room for the other figure. She also spontaneously drew the head up on the page, but I don’t know if she was aware of the fact that it wouldn’t have to lie on its side that way.

To my surprise, she gave the first figure ears. She also suggested she give it hands, only she seemed at a loss as to where to put them. I helped by saying: “Look, Amie, where is my hand? At the end of my arm, yes?” And she got it right away, even glancing over at my arm and hand again to make draw the other hand. Same with the feet.  She got the hands and feet right straight away on the drawing to the right. Their mouths are still hovering underneath their chins, which we think is supercool.

Amie has been drawing her tadpoles consistently, but for one major change. A week ago she started drawing their mouths underneath, that is, outside the head. Consistently. I asked her one day, when she was about to put down the mouth:

“Amie, look, where is Mama’s mouth? Is it inside my face or outside?”

I even pointed at my mouth.

“Outside,” she said, and she drew a biiiiig smile underneath the head.

Strange, no? I am thinking of two possible and related explanations. 1. Mouths and especially smiles are very important to her, the most important facial features (the eyes and nose are three hurriedly placed dots). So they deserve a special, separate place. 2. She may not have drawn a circle (head) big enough to contain that all-important mouth. So it needs to go outside it.

It makes her drawings look very funny, since the legs are still attached to the “chin” and are now drawn through the mouth.

The above represents Number One from the movie Monsters Inc. Number One, or Roz, is a snail, so perhaps the wavy line underneath is her slimy trail. Amie couldn’t enlighten me when I asked.

She drew the next one in the same session:

They often get to lie on their sides because she draws the circle for the head first and she doesn’t yet think ahead to the legs. It doesn’t really bother her, though.

For the next one, also from the same session, you don’t need labels.

She isn’t exclusively drawing tadpoles, however. There is still her ongoing experimentation with color and the sheer motor experience of drawing:

DH is the one who drops Amie off at daycare in the mornings on his way to work. Every morning I rush him/them. Amie by now knows the mantra: “I need to go to office, Baba needs to go to office, Mama also needs to go to office, in the study!”

(This concept, by the way, of all three of us having to do a good job at our respective “offices” really helped her change her attitude about daycare.)

That’s how it is, folks. The moment they’re out of here I rush to the study and start writing on my novel - and occasionally, when inspiration is low or I need a break, on this here blog-thingie. The moment I started realizing the novel might actually bring in some money, I really started considering it as “a job”.

(Note the difference between job and work. The writing was always “work” and therefore worth it, vauable, praiseworthy, proud… But in this society, once work becomes lucrative, the worker gets to have more say -  whether I like it or not).

So this morning it was 8:30 (the time daycare opens) and DH was still in his PJs, checking his email on his laptop (”It’s urgent: it’s work!”). I rushed him - in these cases I don’t mind the nagging - and he laughed and said: “You do this thing in the morning: kicking us out!”

And I said: “You bet I’m kicking you out! My working day just started and you’re still here on my time!”

Don’t worry, it’s all said in a cheerful tone, but this morning I realized that I was also very serious.  And so did DH, I think…

Amie in the meantime was drawing Boo again:

Amie was never interested in TV, but on the flights to and from Singapore she got hooked on the movie Monsters, Inc. She now asks to see it every day, but that’s not what this post is about. It’s about how much she loves those characters, talks about them all the time, pretends to play with them and be them, and today - just today, an hour or so ago - drew them.

This is Boo:

This is Sulley:

Methinks these drawings need no explaining! They all have their legs and arms, Sulley has his thick coat of blue hair, and ”he’s scared of Boo, so he is screaming”.

When I asked her where their bodies are, she pointed to the heads and said: “There”. So they’re the typical tadpole figures any primer on children’s art begins with. She was already putting tadpoles together with play dough, but her control over pens wasn’t good enough, and until yesterday she was drawing stripes haphazardly.

Today she drew slowly and with care, explaining as she went along, needing no direction from me. She  even glanced at the DVD sleeve of the movie to see if she got it right, so there was no question of her intention to represent as closely as she could.

“Two eyes, one mouth, a nose, hai-ai-air, two legs, two arms - lo-o-ong… It’s Boo!”

Watching this video of Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on education and creativity at TED - hilarious, insightful, engaging and (ringing) so true - and reacquainting myself with Danny Gregory’s website and books on drawing, I realized there was a gap in my approach to art and creativity with Amie.

When she draws or paints and asks me to draw something too, I always respectfully decline for several reasons. I don’t want to influence her lines with my perception of things, I don’t want to impose my sense of realism on her, and in the end I like to have a drawing that is wholly hers.

But then how will she see a drawing being made?

Ah!

So I’ve instated another book: the story/drawing/scrap book. It is a sturdy receptacle of stories told and pictures drawn by Amie, spontaneously or when asked. And every other day, I sit down, right there next to her or nearby (”what’re you doin’ Mama?”) and draw something in it.

I copy something from her favorite picture book of the moment, or I draw an object in the room or something imaginary. When she asks, I explain to her what I’m drawing, and let her watch me make lines and add color. If she wants to contribute to the drawing, she is welcome to.

This is a typical page: a note of what she said that day about the names Stella and Elisabeth, and then my copy of Marie-Louise Gay’s Stella. Amie draw some of Stella’s hair.

Stella by Mama and Amie (hair) (Tombow felt pens):

Amie was so inspired, she wanted to draw Stella too, “on my own page by myself”.

How neat to have those two interpretations of Stella next to one another!

Here’s the page we did today:

Can you see how it is a collective effort? She chose the images I should copy, did some of the coloring in, and in the frame in the bottom right corner drew her own Pooh Eating Honey.

I interfere in only two ways: (1) I stop her from blotting everything out with black and (2) I ask her to not push my arm, pen or the book while I’m drawing.

I’ve uploaded a new video to YouTube, this one of Amie (at now 25 months) connecting the dots her Baba made on paper, unwittingly writing the letters A and M (guess why those). I was quite skeptical when I saw what Baba was up to: I didn’t think she could do it. But she did it without hesitation! And now she loves the game, especially when using her new easel (above: still the old airplanes!).

This connect-the-dots game was part of a larger drawing experiment, in which she also completed a face and a house. Her placement of eyes and mouth and windows and chimneys was surprisingly accurate! I’m working on a videoclip of that and a new article in the context of the Drawing as it Develops series. It’s quite relevant to the issue of how toddlers see human bodies: whether they really see them as they draw them…

As you can see, Amie has been painting - you can also see her in action in my previous post.  And as promised, here is some of her artwork (my favorites):

I apologize for the terrible photographs. I’ve been waiting for a clear day to take pictures of them without a flash (they’re on large format, so I can’t scan them in), but the weather has been gray so down here in the basement it’s been even grayer.