One track mind

One of Anna's favorite toys is her magna doodle, which she calls her Game. Rachel loves her Game too but it's hard to tell if that love is genuine or if she's just copying her big sister. Anna has become quite an impressive little artist, drawing people, whales, elephants, mermaids, unicorns as well as regular horses. She can watch us draw something once and then instantly copy it. We signed her up for a drawing class over the summer and she learned to draw ice cream sundaes, lobsters and a dinner plate complete with burger, corn and watermelon, not to mention the silverware.

With all of those items and the rest of the universe to chose from as the subject of her art, Anna's favorite is - can you guess it, can you, can you - mermaids. So every session of Magna Doodle Madness begins with Anna calling to me, "Mommy, do you want to see me draw a beauuuuutiful mermaid?" Exactly the same question every single time, phrased exactly the same way. Rachel responds by offering up her most complicated trick: "Mommy, you want to see me draw, um, a circle?"

So tonight I was encouraging Rachel to expand on her circle. I explained that she could make a circle that looks like a face. Or a circle that looks like a pizza. Or a circle that looked like a cookie. Anna pipes in, in all seriousness: "How about a circle that looks like a beauuuuutiful mermaid?" No one can say the child isn't focused.