The Best We Could Get and Our Budding Artists

We were all dressed up for a swanky Southern Christmas Party when I decided at the last minute that we should capture this moment on film. (Or should I call it digitalia? Ew. That sounds almost gross.) I couldn't get the girls to act natural and hold still at the same time, so here is what we ended up with:

Those hands on the hips . . . I don't know where they come from! But the two older girls liked it so much that they copied her:

I said, "Okay, whatever. We are NOT getting any good pictures! Just make a funny face!"

And how in the world did Choobs know how to make a funny face? I didn't know that she'd caught on to what that was!

Here's our best family picture from the party:

In other updates, I have to talk about Choobs. She is getting so BIG all of a sudden. Even though she's still so little. I think she is one of those artistic child prodigies. Not really, but she does some pretty amazing things for a kid her age - at least things that Raleigh and Madeline didn't do, and they are both pretty artistic.

For example, she colors SO WELL. I will post a picture of her coloring sometime. She doesn't scribble all over the page; she concentrates on one thing at a time and colors it all in, (going out of the lines of course), but she is very focused. Then she'll sit there and draw circles all over the page, and if one turns out looking like a heart, she'll point and say, "Heart!!"

She is also a singer and dancer. When she is in the car, especially, she likes to sing really loud with a fake vibrato. When we're at home and she hears music she likes, she'll drop everything and "danth" (danth). But it's not your usual bouncing or hip-shaking that you see little kids doing; she uses all of her limbs, she dances at differing levels - she'll get really low, and then go up on her tip-toes, moving the rest of her body at the same time. She uses syncopation and gets really expressive and can honestly feel the music.

It is the weirdest thing I've ever seen.

I have to "act like its nothing" when I see it or else she will get embarrassed, otherwise I would have a video. Maybe sometime.

But the other thing is that she also has an amazing imagination already. She likes to take out this wreath form I haven't put to use yet and step inside of it, holding onto the sides. It looks like she's holding the bottom of a dress. Then she'll pat her chest (as if to point to herself) and say, "Printheth." (Princess.) I ask, "Oh. You're a princess?" And she nods her head and says, "Belle." Now our girls have a few things with the Disney princesses on them, but they have never seen the movies (except for Cinderella awhile ago), so she is coming up with this just from her own observation. And the other times she calls herself a princess (printheth) are when she is dancing.

That's when I feel like a princess.

Now here are some examples of her organizational skills:

Apples:

Barbies: (She set this up on her own. Is this normal? Maybe our other girls were just below-average! Seriously, do two-year-olds set up and play with Barbies? I don't know!)

Do they put Chap Stick on the stovetop? Perfectly situated?

Do they organize their animals into straight rows?

Raleigh is a bit like this, too. I'll find that she's left her mark here and there around the house. Like this:

This is a sculpture she left for us. It is a pair of tweezers suspended by a rubber band from a robe hook. She put it on the toilet, so I don't know if the toilet is part of the sculpture or just a backdrop.

And here is the leaning tower of La Creme:

Vanilla, of course.

I'm sure all kids are like this. But I am feeling very artistically stimulated by our children.