Sunday Sketch: Twins in the Mirror

Last week I took M and E to the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. Most of the museum is for kids a bit older, but we went to the nursery area, which was fabulous and more than enough. When I got them out of the stroller they screeched with delight, immediately pulling up on a wood barrier and smiling at all the babies toddling around, the colors, the toys.

Their favorite thing was a very low wooden platform with a bunch of blocks on it. Attached to the wall next to the platform were two metal bins. M spent about a half an hour carefully taking all of the blocks out of the bins. E enjoyed crawling around on the low platform, practicing going from level to level and scooting off onto the carpet while holding a block in each hand.

Since it is Sketch Sunday, I thought I’d commemorate the outing with a watercolor. This is them at the museum, checking out a mirror. This is also part of my new “Explore Pittsburgh with Twin Babies” initiative. Stay tuned for the next edition.

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Happy Father’s Day

Here’s a watercolor of D in the yard with the Bean on his shoulders. What an amazing dad.

Arty Creative Games for Kids Age 2 to 100

Here’s another arty creative game to try with kids or just to do yourself. This is in the same vein as my post on drawings from scribbles and hair.

I just came across this idea here (and in her blog she links to other really fun blogs of the same). Here’s what you do. Draw some random blob with watercolor. Let it dry. Take a pen and make it into something. Here’s what I came up with. And I’ll admit it took four pages for me to get a whole page of them I thought were okay enough to share here (I’ll spare you Elvis Donkey, Upside Down Backpack Man, Rat Dog and the other characters from first few pages 😉 ) Here’s the before and after. Hope they inspire you to a few moments of creativity! It’s pretty addictive.

 

Sunday Sketch

 

I know this is a parenting blog and all, but maybe Sunday Sketch will be my new Sunday thing. Today was not the best day, but in the late afternoon I did take a walk alone in Frick Park.

I turned on a different path, which took me up a steep ravine and then suddenly dead-ended at Forbes Avenue, which traverses the park on a very high overpass. I was disappointed to discover that I’d have to walk the width of the park on Forbes to get back inside. But it turned out to be kind of beautiful walking along so high up, looking down on the trees. I stopped midway to do a quick sketch of the horizon, my sketchbook and pastels balanced precariously on the side rail. My second sketch is of some of my favorite houses along the bowling green.

Tomorrow back to regularly-scheduled baby announcements.

Breastfeeding Animals: Roman Edition

Here’s another watercolor in my breastfeeding animals series. This time I took a little detour into Roman mythology for Romulus, Remus, and the wolf.

First Baby Steps

M is taking little steps. Not by herself, but now when you hold her up by both hands and coax her she takes jerky little steps forward. She is working on walking. Above is a sketch of her and D.

New Horse Friend

Here’s a drawing of our new little rocking/ride-on horse. I got it off the neighborhood list serv for $5. After disassembling it and washing it I’ve finally put it back together and am excited to see how the babies will like it. I hope they do. I’m feeling quite fond of it myself. What a friendly little horse.

Extremely Easy, Arty Creative Games for Kids (or Adults)

Here are two extremely easy, fun creative games that take no supplies at all. When I was younger I used to do these both with my middle sister. Hours of entertainment, I’m telling you.

The first may be a bit easier to take. All you need is two people, a piece of paper and a pen. Here’s how it works. The first person makes some random scribble on the page not resembling anything. The second person then has to make that scribble into a picture of something. That’s it. And actually, you don’t even need two people, you can do it by yourself: I did this evening and quite enjoyed myself actually. Here are my results:

Before

After

Before

After

The second is, wait for it…drawings made of human hair! On the shower wall! What, you’re not convinced? Well I’m telling you when my sister and I were little, we used to be quite impressed by each others’ hair drawings. Though I will admit it led to a lifelong bad habit of sticking shed hair to the wall during showers. At least that keeps it out of the drain. But anyway, I digress. It works similarly to the scribbles. The random hair stuck on the wall suggests the shape of something. Behold a hare of hair:

Hard to take good photos in the shower.

Here’s a little perspective.

And a slimy frog:

Ribbit

Hope you enjoyed. You probably won’t believe me, but the first idea for a blog I ever had was to do a hair picture every day and post it. Probably for the best I didn’t follow through on that one. With twins, I don’t have time for standing around that long in the shower, anyway. Looking forward to when mine are old enough for drawing.

Breastfeeding Gorilla

Here’s another in my nursing animals series. There will probably be more. There’s something compelling, to me, about images of animals nursing. Something about the everydayness, the boringness but also the unknowable. I’m still spending a lot of time nursing twins, watching as they grow bigger and bigger.

Baby Sketchbook

I spent a bit of time in the play pen today sketching the babies. They move around a lot, so not easy, but still fun. Bean kept crawling over and trying to grab my sketchbook, then crying because I wasn’t paying enough attention to her. Actually I was paying a lot of attention to her, but not the type of attention she was looking for.

M decided she would ignore what I was doing and sit with her back to me on the other side of the super yard, but eventually she looked over at me, with Bean lying in my lap, and started crying. I called her and patted my lap but she didn’t want to come, so I just took her up and gave her a hug and a zerbert and that seemed to fix things.