Deliver the Letter

Aidan and Julia,

We have all been working very hard on writing our letters (with great results!). And what better way to practice writing your letters than by writing letters - made up of letters- to your cousins!

So, we sat down on a cool, calm vacation Monday and we wrote our letters. You two wrote your letters all by yourself:

Aidan, you licked the envelope:

 Julia, you put on the stamp:

And then we dropped it in the mailbox... 

A few days later, guess what happened?

Signed, sealed, delivered!

We'll be writing more letters...so we can deliver the letter...the sooner the better!

Masterpieces

Julia, Aidan,

Recently you both have had an artistic awakening or renaissance or self-discovery or something.

Aidan, you used to color and paint a lot. But something over the past 18 months made you shy away from it. You like to paint some, but really had no interest in coloring or drawing or writing. Now sculpting? Play-doh? You could do it all day long. But, for whatever reason, you decided you didn't want to color or paint, and we embraced that decision (and bought a lot of Play-doh).

But late last year your Mom and you started experimenting with less permanent mediums...ie, the Magna-Doodle. No pressure on a magna-Doodle! And you doodled away. Eventually, we started leaving you letters to trace on the Magna-Doodle, and you loved it. You trace the letters at  least once a day and, of course, let us know what letters they are. And, low and behold, recently you started just writing the letters by yourself! Super cool!

Then we started experimenting a little more. Your mom or I would help your draw a circle and then let you draw a face. And, before you knew it, we were drawing your FIRST STICK FIGURES on PAPER! Mommy and I were so pleased!

And then, surprise! For my birthday, I got a signed fully original piece of artwork just from you!

I love it! We proudly hung it in a prominent place at home!

And now, you know what you're saying? You say "I'm Good at Painting, Mommy!" 

Yes you are! And your artistic expressions have started to flow on to paper again!

Also, your Mommy nearly cried when you used scissors properly for the first time in our presence. One handed clipping brought so much joy!

You made a ROBOT:

 And this beautiful masterpiece, which has a surprise involving staples, googly eyes and a lot of glue on the back. This is actually the thing you were working on when you told mommy "I'm good at painting."

Julia, you have always been interested in coloring. You like to use lots of colors, and even have some favorite crayons (which, much to your dismay, I can never seem to find).

Here is one of your latest works.

You're not opposed to collaborations either. You and Mommy worked together to make me a "Silly Mermaid" for my birthday!

For Christmas, Aunt Nessa got you an over-sized Frozen coloring book and you have become quite taken with it. It's the first coloring book that you really showed interest in, and you slave over it with the greatest detail.

Look at the eyes, which you chose to color blue and her mouth, and how you labored to color in each little gem stone green (and one red).

The two of you don't have to be artists, and we really don't mind if you don't like painting or drawing (even though it is such a big part of your mom's career and education). But we love that you guys can both find any way to express yourself artistically. 

And, when dealing with a toddler and a kid when there are paints and markers and crayons at eye-level and fully accessible, we are thankful that most of your masterpieces in these mediums are on paper!