Day 36 - Liony bum

(Tuesday August 24th)

I bought J-cub some awesome leggings off ebay (it's not too early to be preparing for winter, right?) and they arrived today. One pair has a lion playing the piano on the back, and the other has a frog playing an accordion. They are ridiculously cute, especially over his big cloth-bum.

He seemed to know just how adorable he was being, and did his best ANTM-style fierce poses for me (check out the hip flung out to one side...) whilst munching on a nectarine (yes, there is a nectarine in there somewhere).

The rest of the day, predictably, was spent chalking. And J-cub absolutely, categorically, did not eat any chalk.

He did though draw a fish. We've been playing a game where he hands off the chalk to one of us, we draw one of his favourite animals, then he scribbles over it. Our fish are of the single-swooping line variety, and after watching us do this over and over again, he made a very passable attempt at it. See, in the bottom left, the massive head/body and the tiny triangular tail? And the eye? How clever is he?

Day 33 - Chalk it up...

(Saturday August 21st)

J-cub's passion for drawing has been taken up a notch by the purchase of some chunky chalks. No more little tiny pieces of crumbly, edible chalk which he can barely hold and which make hardly a mark on the old blackboard. Instead, these lovely things make chalking J-cub's new favourite activity.

We tried to instil a rule whereby if he used chalk on anything other than the blackboard (the carpet, the TV, my shoulder...) it would be immediately removed. Cue screaming tantrums and frantic pointing and grunting at the box of chalks. Even attempts at doing alternative activities (like nappy changing, eating or sleeping...) elicited J-cub's first self-invented sign, a very precise finger-wiggle in the air, just like scribbling on a blackboard.

Returning the piece (or pieces) of chalk to him made him extremely happy. I think we've created a monster.