Big hello to Toushka of Ramblings from Toushka for putting me onto this meme. Sorry I’m a few days late – I got snowed-under with work – but I’m sure you understand.
Do you ever get inordinately proud when your kid does something mundane? Today (or rather yesterday) I spent the day at home with our 2-and-a-bit year-old Embodiment of the Primal Chaos, and he did something that just blew my mind. Behold:-
.
That, my friend, is a tree. His tree, to be precise, that he proposed making after finding a used paper-towel roll on the floor (it’s where we keep all our stuff). I didn’t even hint at the possibility, he found the roll and presented it to me with the idea all by himself. He also glued on most of the grass, cut out a few of the leaves and stuck them on, and proposed that we make it an apple tree (unfortunately I only had orange paper left, but he gets red and orange mixed up anyway, so he didn’t seem to mind).
But wait, it gets better. You see that black blob stuck to the side?
Caterpillar
That’s a caterpillar. Apparently he was inspired by the events of Tuesday, when we went to New Farm Park and found a caterpillar, so he decided that we should make a caterpillar to climb the tree. After some discussion, he decided upon the colour, I cut it out for him with his direction (“Many legs. More. Many legs.”), and he glued it on the trunk. How rad is that?!
At New Farm Park on Tuesday
It was several months ago that Entropy Boy reached the ‘fortuitous realism’ stage of Luquet’s drawing stages, which is when children start to ascribe meaning to scribbles that they produce when they vaguely resemble something. So, for example, Pseudonymous Kid would roll play-dough and call it a snake, or draw some lines and declare it a spider. The stage following this is the unfortunately named ‘failed realism’ stage, where the child consistently decides before-hand what they should draw, and the topic is often discernible to an adult. So I’m very excited to see the beginnings of his transition to the next stage.
Since Master T was small, I’ve kept a little log-book of the new things that he does. I recommend this for any parent – it’s quite fun to look back on earlier entries and remember what your kid was up to at that age. Last night I added an entry for his tree, along with a few other imaginative leaps he’s made lately, such as pretending that his crib is a car, and that we are all kangaroos complete with a pouch for me for him to sit in. I also went back over some of the previous entries, and I found this:-
Entropy log
For those who can’t read my messy writing, it says:
When he heard a boy crying on the tram, he turned to Papa and said “ow?”
Of all of the developments that he’s made, this one is still my favourite because it represents the first time that his innate empathy was made apparent to us. I suppose that this is one of the truly wonderful things about being a parent, that by watching our child develop, we get to appreciate all those special things about them and us that makes us people.
Mother to a two year old son, casual research scientist, and newbie into the world of online trade. This is my blog about being a primary care-giver, my journey into becoming an Australian Fair Trade merchant, and anything else that takes my fancy.
Ola
Mike
Tam
Andie
Adriana Bellemans
Nadiah
David Gabe
Zain@Foam Roller
Slow Fashioned
hi .. thanks for visiting my space. the fair trade soap is dr bronners lavender – my favorite.
my friend sent it over from the states. love your little ones rainbow top !xx
angelina recently posted..my creative space – yarns
Thanks for that Angelina, I’m always on the lookout for new fair trade stuff.
Thanks for the compliment of the rainbow hoodie – it’s also fair trade. I loved them so much I started selling them, and decided I’d buy one from the business for my own son when he grew out of the old one.
Hello Nadiah, Thanks for visiting me. I like your little boy’s tree – great promise there. Hang on to it for posterity as point of interest when he has his first exhibition. (who knows?) I love the book idea. Write down all his funny little sayings too; they’re great fun to read together when he is grown up.
He says a few funny things now that his speech is coming along, so I think you’re right – I should add them to the book as well.
I love this entry.
My son is about the same age and likes to paint trees but hasn’t quite made a tree out of stuff and glue yet. It also sounds like we have the same filing system for stuff – on the floor.
I like the log book idea – I had the same plans in theory but never got around to it, keep writing the entries in my head like “today you…..” but they never get down on paper, I think it may be because the pens are on the floor.
Toushka recently posted..Thousand Word Thursday
Please do get a log book. Just any old notepad will do – you can always move the entries to a fancy one later (which is my plan too… eventually), I think what matters is just getting them down before I forget!
Love the tree! Very creative. (I especially love the leaves that have fallen from the tree).
Cute and very creative tree, love the caterpillar.
Susan recently posted..A time to embarrass the male folk
Thanks
I can’t give him full credit for the caterpillar as I cut it out for him, but it was his idea. He’s pretty into caterpillars right now.
Pingback: More stuff by T | Playing Fair's Blog
For your boy to have the planning skills to see the paper roll, and visualise it as a tree. Beautiful! I have a little log book for my second, and you’ve just reminded me that I really need to update it.
Do you ever just look back through it and laugh a bit? I have the silliest entries here — “Today I sat T up against a cushion and he didn’t just fall straight over!” Heaven help me if he ever graduates from Uni or something, I might just get so excited I’ll rupture something.