putting your thoughts on paper

I'm sure every kid loves to draw, so the fact that mine draw hilariously funny pictures is nothing new.  Still, I love admiring their artwork and getting a glimpse into their minds and the things they think about.  With both girls, their artwork reflects a very few things: their friends, their family, and other things which go unidentified (like, "What's this?"  "I don't know, mama").

I'd like to invite you today to a special showing of the Emma collection.

First, we have a portrait of Emma and her ex-dog, Jessie.  You can see here that Emma is blue, with very large, black, fly-like eyes.  She's holding on to Jessie by a leash.  Jessie, who is a dachshund, looks surprisingly like a giraffe, but I love the effort.  Many of emma's current masterpieces involve Jessie (renamed Beans by her new owners, and now goes by the name JessieBeans in our home).

Next up is one of my favorites.  One thing Emma likes to do is pretend she's going to America, and one day she decided she'd take all her friends with her.  This is a picture of an airplane with all her friends sitting single-file in airplane seats.  I LOVE the creativity the girl has!  At the top, she begins the Passenger Manifest (these spellings are all her own):  Kesid (Kesed), Mallaci (Malachi), Alex (correct)...
The back of the paper has the rest of the Passenger List: savana (savannah), clara (correct), sala (selah), Emma (yep, correct), clowe (chloe), Samantha (yay!), cristin (Christin), Abby, Macarea (Makaria), Caris (Charis), and two other names I can't identify.  Hope this plane doesn't crash...I won't be able to notify those two families!  =)
Continuing on in her love for writing, this letter was written to Mimi and G (my parents) and I just never got around to mailing it.  Here you go, Mimi and G!  (Sorry...I have no idea what it says. There's something on here about coming to your house, but I don't know about the rest.)
This is a picture of Emma, Samantha, Clara and Chloe - who are all princesses - standing in frontish/on top-ish of a castle.  The castle is blue with brown little parapet things:
We've got the birthday cake drawing mastered.  If you receive a birthday cake like this in the mail from us, please forgive me.  I have no other ideas.  Emma especially likes adding candles, sprinkles and extra balloons, flying precariously close to the candles.  
This letter/drawing shows the unshakable confidence of my four-year-old.  She read this to me and it says something like: "I was so cool, like a owl on the swing."  (I was so cwol lic a owl on the s???) Apparently, she is so cool it must be documented for posterity.  
This is a picture of our apartment building.  No, we don't have that much grass in front of our building.  (I wish.)  
This was Samantha's answer to emma's picture of our apartment building.  Same general structure, with fewer (ok, a LOT fewer) details.  
Cute stuff, huh?  Actually I took all these pictures so I could feel a little more justified in not saving all these drawings... I mean, if they're on my computer, it's just as good as storing them in a drawer, right?? 

Coming up next, Samantha's masterpieces...