Using Your Hands to Draw? B-O-R-I-N-G

Foot Drawing

Lillian, who will be three years old in just nine days, likes to draw (on anything and anywhere). Sometimes, she finds that holding markers in her hands is just too simple and boring, so she uses her toes to grasp the markers.

She was a little disappointed with the markers she is holding in the picture, which her Yia-Yia got for her, because they only work on special paper, so she wasn’t able to leave traces of her presence on the walls or cover herself in dramatic markings. Grandmothers can be sneaky that way.

Ghosts and Girls: The Artist Speaks

This afternoon, the chalk artist was decorating the patio (and patio chairs and her feet) again.

She drew two parallel lines and said, “ePa, yook!”

“At what, Lilz?”

She rapidly drew a series of lines above the two parallel ones, pointed to them and said, “A ghost, ePa, it’s a ghost!”

“Wow,” said ePa.

Then she drew a circle with four lines extending from it and pointed to it.

“Yook,” she said, “A girl!”

“Artfully done,” said ePa (whose fund of witty repartee for use with two year olds is quite limited), as he snapped a quick pic of the two masterpieces.

A good thing he did, too, as the artist soon covered them with a drawing of a heavy curtain done in yellow chalk.

Two-Fisted Chalker

Lillian, decorating the patio, patio chairs, socks, dogs, etc. with chalk. A fine entertainment, leading to a colorful butt for any careless chair sitters.

Lillian and Her NaNa

It’s always a big day when Lillian gets to spend time with NaNa and PawPaw — Peggy and Keith Denby.

Chalk Talk: A Video

While Lillian’s Yia-Yia Nancy recovers from her recent thyroid troubles, Lauren Roesler, a friend of Lillian’s Uncle Richard, has been staying with Nancy and the irrepressibly talkative Lillian Grace Denby during the day (Nancy can’t drive or lift anything heavier than 10 pounds, meaning she can’t pick Lillian up).

Today, they got some sidewalk chalk and drew strange and mysterious signs and symbols on the front door step. When Lillian hands you something, it sounds like she says “Here ya go, daddy” even when she is handing something to her grandmother. I think, however, that we haven’t heard her quite correctly. I suspect she is making a subtle literary reference to the Beat poets of the late 1950s: I think she’s actually saying “Here ya go, daddy-o.”

Lillian Grace Denby: Beatnik