Ava Thursday: Big hand

Before we took off for Florida several weeks ago, Ava got on a big kick drawing with these new markers that Andrea bought for her that were erasable. They have very bold colors and the ink is somewhat thick like paint -- especially when it dries on paper. Ava loved them. She would draw on several pages at a time and get really into it, forgetting about the upcoming vacation to the beach that she was very very excited about.

Now, kids love to do the ol' tracing of the hand bit, with Ava no different. She likes the way it tickles when the marker or crayon goes around the fingers and under the wrist. I find it fun too. For this sort of action, a parent is usually called to help out, but after Mommy helped Ava out on one hand-tracing with the new erasable markers, Ava decided to do it on her own. She very carefully traced her hand and then lifted it to draw the rest of her arm. I did not witness the creation of this piece until after it was finished, so I was unfamiliar with the shape at the bottom there, about the attention given to it, etc. Ava told me that it was her head. I blinked.

"Really? Where?" To me, it looked like a yellow bridge with two creatures underneath. Trolls? Spiders? I was baffled.

"Right there!"

And then suddenly, I saw it. See, when you're used to a certain way that your child draws, to see something completely different takes a while for the gears to shift. Here, she drew the top part of her head, cropped.

Cropped? Omigosh. Ava is thinking about composition here. See, to know why I'm so jazzed about this bit of creative development, you have to understand that kids usually draw everything they know of a subject -- if it's a person, they'll draw the entire kit-in-kaboodle: the body, head, arms, legs, eyes, EVERYTHING. Here, Ava decided that she didn't need to draw the rest of the face, or the head for that matter, and just left it like this, with the eyes peeking just slightly over the edge of the paper there. She made the conscientious decision that we'd understand that there's more to this drawing past this particular point. She cropped the head knowing that it would be crowded and wouldn't look right to her. Quite an important discovery for a child her age!

She ended up drawing about five more like this, with each girl having different features. I'll post the rest up later, as they're pretty fun.

(Oh, and in case you're wondering, she drew one of the new special markers over there on the left. And the thing that looks like an eye on her hand is actually a colorful band-aid. She likes to draw band-aids for some reason.)

Sorry for beaming like the proud father that I am. It's really exciting for me to witness this girl grow and learn on her own.