Baby Picasso

Move over Baby Einstein, we have a little artist on our hands. Katie absolutely loves to color, whether it is with crayons, highlighters, chalk, straws, forks...She will use anything that even resembles a crayon to "color" things. We have bathtub markers and she loves to be able to draw on the walls in the tub. We work hard to make sure she knows that's the only place she can actually draw on the walls.

On the nights where I am preparing a meal that requires my attention, I plop Katie in the high chair with a coloring book and crayons and turn on Toddler Tunes on the television. We (mainly me) sing together and she colors and I cook. It's a pretty good arrangement and I am thankful for her attention span!

She appears to be pretty much right handed and actually shows good manual dexterity using the little crayons. She rarely alternates to her left hand but sometimes she will get going with both hands at the same time.

This particular coloring book came with stickers too and she loves to peel the stickers and place them on the pages. She says it adds an immediate pop of color to an otherwise "blah" page. Her words, not mine.

When she's done coloring, she tends to start to clear her workspace by throwing the book and the crayons all over the kitchen floor. On this fateful evening, instead of picking the crayons up and placing them back in their drawer, she thought she would continue her coloring on the floor. This is a major NO-NO and she had to clean it up, which I think she actually enjoyed!

The crayon proved to be a little difficult to get off the floor so she really had to put some elbow grease into the task! She literally laid there on the floor scrubbing and scrubbing and laughing and laughing at it. Eventually, Doug stepped in and got the remaining marks off the floor!