Callie the Artist (creative adventures in June)

To wrap up my June-blog blogging (just in time for August!), I wanted to write about all the changes we have seen in Callie lately and her very unique personality and style that is becoming more apparent to us each day.  Callie definitely marches to her own beat and has specific likes and dislikes now.  And one of those major "likes" is art.  She may not look much like her mommy but she is certainly taking after me in that one area.  She will color and color and color - intensely - for long periods of time.  And it is not just scribbling all over a paper.  She will pick one color that will be her main color for the day and she will color EVERYTHING that color.  When she has finished a picture, there are no white spaces left inside the lines of the object she is coloring.  This coloring in the lines came about fairly suddenly one day after she watched our friend Charlotte color.  I have been teaching some art lessons off and on, as time permits this summer, and Callie loves to participate.  She was already a good colorer for her age, but once she watched Charlotte color (Charlotte is 5), it was like something clicked in her mind and she new what to do from then on.  The most stunning thing for us, though, has been her drawing ability.  I know I sound like just another mom who is completely infatuated with her kid and thinks they are the best at everything.  But Matt and I actually researched developmental stages of drawing and realized that Callie is on par with a 3-4 year olds in that area.  She may not be completely understandable when she talks, although she is improving her verbal skills daily, but she is definitely ahead of the game when it comes to physical tasks and mental ones.  She regularly amazes us with her problem solving and her creativity and quirkiness.  Just take a look at the pictures and judge for yourself!...

 Hard at work with watercolors at her art table which is now in the living room.  Combining her art space and mine no longer works because she isn't satisfied with her art tools once she sees me working with mine!

 Coloring on herself - she is really into body art.  I think Matt's tattoo inspires her!  She loves to look at it and trace it with her finger.  Washable marker tattooing is the closest thing she will be getting EVER, if mommy has anything to do with it!

Matt drew a cat nose and whiskers on her one day and now she draws it on herself regularly and then walks around meowing.  This is her version of whiskers and nose...and apparently a beard as well.  She also decides at random times to act like a cat.  One day it was when she was walking through Walmart with Matt. She bent over and started meowing.  Matt just let her go with it until she dropped to her knees and wanted to crawl around the store!

Her biggest inspiration (pun intended!) is Oliver.  The two have become very close.  He meows around the house for her when we are sleeping because he wants her up.  I think he will be her first bed buddy once she is in a big girl bed.  Maybe then he will stop meowing.  We call him our rooster.  This picture was taken after she had finished making a pizza on Ollie's belly with her wooden pizza toy.  The toppings fell off before I could get the picture.

 Here is Callie coloring in the lines while working on her peacock picture (see previous post for backstory on the peacock.)  You will also notice that she is a lefty.  She got this from Matt's grandmother or my grandfather.  No one else is a lefty in the family that we know about.

 Here's her precious little hand stamping the eyes of the peacock feathers.

And here is her finished picture.  We ended up making two.  One for Daddy and one for Pa as Father's Day presents.

She also made Yoo-Hoo a mermaid picture (with lots of help from mommy!) and a flower picture for Mimi as a retirement present.

A quick side note:  I started a new art blog called Manda Panda to keep track of my own whimsical paintings and kid's room decor and also as a place to post project ideas and things that Callie and other kids have done at my house.  I will soon post the peacock project details so check it out and share with others.

 One night, Callie was drawing on this posterboard.  She first amazed us by drawing the oval object you can see in the middle.  She added two eyes and a mouth to it and said it was a fish.  I asked her to point out the eyes and mouth and she proved to us that she had intentionally drawn them.  (the circle thing in the middle of the oval is a fin, I think.)  But then she started drawing the object next to it.  Matt watched her and thought to himself that it looked like a duck.  Once Callie stopped drawing she looked up at him and said, "Daddy, guck guck" and pointed to the duck drawing.  We both stared at it in disbelief.  Here is a black and white version of it because it is hard to see in the orange she drew it in.  You can see the duck body shape, a wing and then two eyes and a pointy beak.  She loves ducks, including Daffy and Donald, and loves to visit the neighborhood ducks so it was not surprise that she drew one --just very surprising that she actually knew HOW to draw one!

And finally, to finish up my long list of bragging, here are some pictures of Callie doing some of the funny, quirky things she does.

 Her wings she asked the balloon guy at Friendly's to make for her.  She loves for Daddy to make her fly and can now almost say "butterfly" correctly!

Yoo-hoo hasn't gotten around to caning this little rocking chair, but that doesn't stop Callie from rocking in it!

 She insisted on bathing with her new pool toy.

 She loves hats and loves to pick out her own shoes.  She went to AC Moore with me in the outfit above.  Matt took this picture mostly because she was watching Star Wars and was loving it.  He was so excited!

Here is her typical shoe choice.  Rainboots and jammies go great together, don't you think?