My daughter knows that when my wife or I are at our computer, we are doing "work." Sometimes my work looks a lot like shooting lasers at aliens, but in my daughter's eyes, it's all work if it involves typing on the computer or clicking the mouse. If Addison sees an unoccupied computer, she'll beeline towards it and get to "work."
In my particular case, my "work" includes drawing extremely artistic stick figures in MS Paint. I mean, I call it work, even if my wife cocks an eyebrow and snorts a little bit when I very seriously explain this to my daughter.
So I was sitting at my computer struggling to draw a stuffed bunny for Wednesday's post, when Addison wandered in and said, "Up!" I lifted her into my lap, and she watched me for a minute before scrounging a highlighter and a piece of paper from the detritus on my desk. This is what she did:
She's not yet two and a half, and I think it's pretty clear that she's already bested me in the art department. I try to console myself that not more than a month ago she did this:
And you'll think at first, hey, that's a pretty good face, a big Elmo nose and everything. But that's no nose! This is what she told me she was doing as she was drawing it:
A stomach right in the middle of the face? Using the Sesame Street test, which of these things is not like the others? Unless she somehow had John Carpenter's The Thing on when she was supposed to be watching Blue's Clues (kids are sneaky these days, I know), I'd say she royally screwed this one up.
But maybe . . . maybe she was just trying to lull me into a false sense of security, making me think I had this whole cartooning gig in the bag, when really she was prepping to supplant my role as head comic-maker in the house! After a few quick strokes with the highlighter, she handed me the paper matter-of-factly, slid down off my lap, and started rifling through the garbage.
She didn't even make a big point about it. Just did her thing and left. Dad, her drawing said, get used to coming in second.