Portrait of the Artist as a Little Bear

Among Jessica's favorite things to do is drawing and coloring, usually in appropriate places like her coloring books and notebooks and loose blank paper, but occasionally in inappropriate places like one of Mommy's or Daddy's books or the wall or the top of her Diaper Genie.

Here are a couple of pictures of her drawing this past Tuesday morning:

Visiting Lucye; More Reading with Mommy

A couple of weeks ago, Daddy and Jessica went to Roswell to visit their friends Audrey and Lucye. Jessica was very interested in exploring their house (Stairs to go up and down! New toys to play with!), while Lucye was very interested in catching Jessica to give her a welcoming hug:

(photos by Audrey Loverin)
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We do a lot of reading at our house--the daughter of a writer/college English instructor and an elementary school librarian, Jessica was fated to either love or hate books. Fortunately, she loves them. Here, Mommy and Jessica read a back issue of the now-defunct Wonder Time magazine:

Jessica's Desk

Jessica's great-grandfather, Grampa Ray, sent her some spendin' money for her birthday, which we used to buy her a Step 2 The Write Desk. She loves to sit at her desk and draw with her crayons or washable* markers:


*You must always buy washable markers for a toddler, for sometimes the markings need to be washed from her hands and arms and face and Mommy's and Daddy's hands and arms and face and the cat and the wall and her lunch and the car and the refrigerator...

Stone Mountain

On Sunday afternoon, Mommy and Daddy and Jessica went to Stone Mountain Park to enjoy the beautiful seventy-degree pre-Spring day. We spent the whole time exploring the area adjacent to the walk-up trail, which abounds with sticks and rocks and other wonderful things to play with and experiment with. Here are seven pictures of Jessica, the Adventurer and Explorer:








Nota bene: Richard Louv wrote a book called Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder about "the staggering divide between children and the outdoors." As long as there are sticks to drag around and rocks to throw, it seems that Jessica is in no danger of suffering from this disorder.

Dad's Breakfast

This morning, Jessica's preschool had a Dads' Breakfast for all us dads. Here's a picture that Ms. Karen, the music teacher, took of Jessica and her daddy:

(As you can see, Jessica was about half-way through a powdered doughnut at the time.)

Here, Jessica takes a contemplative break from enjoying her powdered doughnut:

Snow!

On the first day of March, less than three weeks from the beginning of Spring, it began to snow here in Georgia, and it didn't stop until we had four inches on the ground!

Here are several pictures of Jessica experiencing her first snowfall, first on Sunday afternoon while it was still snowing:







Here, Mommy realizes happily that, since this isn't Minnesota, all of the snow will be gone in a couple of days:

(In fact, the current forecast calls for temperatures in the low 70's this coming weekend!)

Here's what the playground looked like Monday morning, after the snow had stopped falling but not yet started to go away:


Here's our whole little family, surrounded by snow, on Monday morning:

And two more pictures of Jessica playing in the snow (yes, with socks on her hands):