Anthony’s Drawings Move to the Next Level
Mizuki and Anthony Drawing by Anthony (five years two months) (used without permission, but if he sues me, I'll put him to bed without supper) -- http://regex.info/blog/
Mizuki and Anthony
Drawing by Anthony (five years two months)
(used without permission, but if he sues me, I'll put him to bed without supper)

Anthony drew the picture above as a present for one of the girls in his class, Mizuki-chan. She came over for a visit on Friday and forgot one of her toys, so he's including the drawing along with the toy when he returns it to her tomorrow.

He drew the picture below last week, at my request for a drawing that we could include on our Christmas / New Year's cards. I didn't request any specific content, but he naturally knew to draw a family picture...

Mommy, Anthony, (George), and Daddy -- http://regex.info/blog/
Mommy, Anthony, (George), and Daddy

It was nice that he even included Curious George, a constant companion he received as a present from my coworkers at Yahoo! Finance just prior to his birth.

Anthony has many strong points, but drawing has never been one of them. At five years, two months old, many of his classmates have more developed drawing skills, but as you'd expect from parents, we're plenty enamored with what he produces just as it is.

You can certainly see the progress over time, comparing these with something from when he was almost three years old, and a couple of items from a year ago: family drawings and attention to biological detail. This week's drawings are even a big jump from what he was doing three months ago.

Another area where Anthony is perhaps a bit behind his peers is in reading and writing. The reason, of course, is that he's got two languages to deal with (and his speaking and listening are quite bilingual), so today when he wrote his name all by himself without any prompting or example to copy from, there was much joy all around.

This writing was in the fog on the mirror above the bathtub, while having a bath with Mommy. When he got out of the bath, he wanted to write more, so I got paper and pen and he drew this:

Sleeping -- http://regex.info/blog/
Sleeping

The top characters (あんと) are his name in Japanese (“anto”). He then drew a picture of the family sleeping, and tried to write his name again beside his head. He apparently made a mistake with the last letter, because he then wrote that above, converting the mistake into a trash can sitting on the floor beside the sleeping Daddy (where there is really a trash can).

His attempt to cover up the mistake reminds me of when I was in third grade and was drawing a Mother's Day card, I must have been daydreaming because I wrote “FROM JEEF”. Realizing my mistake, I drew a sun such that one of the sunbeams covered the bottom of the second “E”, converting the phrase to the proper “FROM JEFF”. I did this with sufficient skill that no one would ever be able to notice, yet, quite oddly, from about that time my siblings sometimes took to calling me “JEEF”, a mistake that they still occasionally make to this day. Go figure.


All 2 comments so far, oldest first...

The readers of this blog should be comforted in the fact that Jeffrey is not the only one who remembers the JEEF incident, and he has been called that by his older brothers more than once, and not just during childhood 🙂

— comment by Steve Friedl on December 17th, 2007 at 9:15am JST (16 years, 3 months ago) comment permalink

Well, though you are technically correct, Steve, I believe his younger brother and, in truth , his sister, may have referred to Jeff that way too. And in fact, I believe there was an even more endearing nickname that was, and is still, affectionately used, one that he coined himself as a three year old.

— comment by Grandma Friedl on December 17th, 2007 at 10:34am JST (16 years, 3 months ago) comment permalink
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