Family Portrait

I love Penny's drawings. There is something fairly distinct about the way she handles her markers that I always recognize as very -- Pennyish.

But what I most like about how she draws is that she doesn't feel the need to conform to any typical ideas about things like . . . oh . . . the human form.

Take this recent family portrait for example. See me? I'm the one there on the right with yellow hair and a rather corn-cob looking mouth. As you can see, she knows well enough the typical layout of the human body -- there I am: head, body, arms, legs and even my "church shoes" (as Penny informed me when I asked if I was wearing heels). And take a look at Goldie -- the blue girl at the bottom of the paper. She's fairly typical (although I admit her hair is blue and her eyes are a bit psychotic).

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But then . . . there's Mike. For him, she decided a giant blue and red stripey blob would be more fitting. And, what about Daisy? She is actually sporting not one, but TWO pairs of wings. Wings I say! (And a tail?). Penny saw no need to explain why this would be. Only nodded that yes, those were wings on Daisy, when I asked.

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Anyway, that's all that really needs commenting, but I will also let you know that Jesse is the small pink fella, Abe is the yellow and orange guy, and Penny is "wearing a gray crown that I bought for her [I haven't actually purchased her a gray crown] and wrapped in her pink blanky." I imagine a child psychologist could have quite a field day with this!

But, Penny has been particularly fun lately. She keeps sneaking out of her bed in the middle of the night. She doesn't try to bother us. I'll just wake to find her trying to make a little bed for herself on the floor next to our bed. Or, last night, I discovered her sleeping on the hard box springs that were left in the room that we just opened up and moved Goldie out of.

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Plus, she just does and says funny things. When I was tucking her in the other night I asked her why there were all these small pieces of toilet paper sitting next to her bed. "Mom!" She said in a frustrated tone, "They're for my collection!" And the other night, as she was heading up to bed she said, "Say goodnight to my room 'cause my room can talk!" And then, in the deepest most frightening voice that made Mike and I look at each other and burst out laughing she said (speaking as her room), "Good night, Mom!"

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And lastly, can I just say that sometimes I don't know what on earth I am even supposed to be explaining to my children? Recently Penny looked at me kind of seriously and kind of confusedly and said, "Did you know a prophet is in our tummies?"

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"Ummm." I said, trying to think what she was trying to get at here, "Well. The prophet actually lives at his own house . . . but . . . sometimes babies grow in mommies tummies?" I replied -- hopefully -- wondering if this could be what she was after.

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She only shook her head and said defensively, "Well. Something is in us!"

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Hesitatingly I tried, "Our spirits?"

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"YEA!" She shouted -- as if I'd gotten the right answer on a game show.

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Whew. Tough.