An Artist Blooming

Since Elly had her 1st birthday and officially became a toddler, I have had an intense desire to introduce her to the world of drawing and coloring.

My first attempt didn’t go well due to her intense desire to jam everything in her mouth, despite buying markers designed especially for her age. After such a failure, the crayons were hastily packed away. I try to be a lax mom, but the thought of Elly crapping a rainbow of colors made me nervous and a bit sick to my stomach.

Last week, I finally had the privilege of mailing Elly original artworks to her grandparents. What changed? I tried letting Elly draw with the humble pencil. For the first five minutes, it was a perfect match. Elly held the pencil between her thumb and middle finger, like she had been doing it all her life. Then, she proceeded to flip through her notebook and draw on the pages as inspiration hit her. I was thrilled and quickly ran to get the camera.

After those first five minutes were up, things started to go downhill quickly. Elly chewed the eraser off and spat it out. When she turned the pencil around and bit off the lead tip, I called the drawing session to a close.

Certain that surely somebody designed pencils for kids, I searched online for a fatter pencil that didn’t have a tasty eraser on the back end. Leave it to Crayola to have exactly what I wanted: Write Start colored pencils.

After ten minutes of drawing, Elly still tries to eat the pencils, but she hasn’t managed to snap the lead tip off like she did with the narrow #2 pencil nor is there an eraser to eat. Plus, she loves the designs on each pencil. I think her favorite is the apple pencil, which of course is the red pencil.