I expected my sister-in-law’s visit with her four girls, aged two to nine, to produce some humorous stories in which I lost my cool or mind or perhaps a little bit of both. While there were a few moments of insanity which made me question why anyone would choose to have four or more kids, for the most part, the visit went smoothly. In fact, I kinda’ miss having them around because I really enjoyed seeing E interact with other children. Well, when they weren’t fighting over toys, anyway.

One of the good things to come from the visit was a new routine E and I have, coloring.

While we have colored before, and I often draw for him, the routine was sporadic at best. Mostly because he grew bored quickly.

However, while the girls were here, they colored at the table on a daily basis and E thrived on the interaction. So much so that he is now asking Blogger Mom and I to color several times a day. Being a cartoonist, this is all kinds of awesome for me. For one, I get to impress my son with a talent I have. For two, it’s nice to see him get lost in the act of coloring.

I probably got into drawing in order to connect with my mother.

When I was a child, my mom used to draw in a tablet all the time. She was really good, too. I remember her drawing animals, cartoon characters and pictures from greeting cards we received. She usually colored them in with colored pencils, something I was never really good at doing. I remember looking through her book on almost daily basis, wishing I could draw the things she drew. I tried, I mimicked several of her drawings. Then I progressed to tracing images from a Spider Man coloring book until I was able to train my muscle memory to draw Spider Man, or at least a seven year old’s version, on my own.

So it is interesting that my son is taking to drawing at the age of two.

Saturday, he grabbed my hand and said, “color, daddy?” and led me to the kitchen table where we sat next to one another with a box of well worn crayons and a stack of paper.

He asked me to draw different things, including a penguin or a “pen-pen” as he calls them. I quickly drew a crude crayon penguin. You have to be fast with E, because he is chomping at the bit to get his hands on the picture. Once I was done, he asked, “I color penguin?”

So I handed him the penguin, he scribbled circles all over my drawing, then handed it back to me.

“I colored pen-pen,” he said.

And my heart melted.

My drawings are not art until E has taken a crayon to them.

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