While Jonah was at school, Nora and I got out the paints. It is so fun to watch her paint because she really doesn’t care at all if she gets stuff on her hands (or anywhere else). First we dipped some of her plastic blocks in the paint to use as stamps, and then got out the brushes. The paintbrush was definitely her favorite part, and she’s getting pretty good at the whole ‘dip it in the paint and then brush it on the paper’ routine.

Then while I was making dinner that night, Jonah was hard at work writing in a little notepad at his table. He had decided to make a list of things he loves, one per page. He had “Jonah loves trucks,” “Jonah loves trains,” and “Jonah loves dump trucks.” Of course.

Funny boy

For Valentine’s Day, Jonah made train cards for everyone in his class – drew the train, stamped ‘Happy Day’ on it, and put some heart stickers puffing out of the smokestacks. I helped glue them on to posterboard. When they were finished, I just had to get a picture of the whole crew!

He’s been a regular factory with his trains, churning out more and more by the day. I took pictures of some of my favorites. (Every once in a while, a regular truck sneaks in the mix, too.)

Lots of happy trains!

Top left: our garbage truck company – Sanipac
Top right: heart picture he made at school
Bottom: more trains and a happy sun

Top left: flatbed truck carrying a dump truck
Top right: little red caboose, Jonah was trying to write block letters for this one!
Bottom left: a WM garbage truck
Bottom right: James, his tender, and coal car

Two of my favorites!
Top: Jonah drew a picture of Thomas on TV, with the words to the sing-along-song underneath, just like on TV – “Thomas we love you”
Bottom: This is Gordon. He has four wheels in front. Jonah put a plus sign in between them, and wrote “to” (two) on either side of them, “so it means two plus two” and then he wrote “is four” at the top. “Because two plus two is four!! And Gordon has four wheels!!”

Top: a dump truck driving on a very sunny day
Bottom: I drew him the body of the garbage truck, and he made the rest of the scene – airplane, sun, house with a dump truck in the garage and a trash can at the end of the driveway

And finally, Jonah wrote out his own checklist of evening chores – things to pick up in the living room. “All trucks, all trains, all books, all shoes” And then he cleaned them all up and checked off the boxes. :)

Nora and Jonah spent some time drawing together this morning. Nora had a good time making lines and stabbing dots on the paper, while Jonah leaned over to show her how to draw an excavator.

This was probably the longest Nora’s ever drawn before deciding to just eat the crayons and markers – she was happily making pictures for over 20 minutes. I tried to notice if she’s started to favor one hand over the other, but she’s just as happy using either one. Or both.

Jonah was practicing drawing his trains today (big surprise) and writing their names, too. He was pretty proud of himself.

Here are some of the other pictures he’s drawn lately.

Long buses, driving on a sunny day

A digger, or excavator, as he now prefers to call them

His first airplane – “I never even knew I could draw an airplane!”

Mom and Jonah, standing next to each other. Jonah is on the right, “with railroad tracks on his shirt.”

A very busy excavator, working hard in the rain

A train with some coal in the tender

A house with lots of windows, smoke coming out the chimney, and sun on one side of the sky with snow falling down on the other side of the roof.

Jonah saw (in his imagination) an owl in a tree last night. Since I missed it, he drew me a picture of what it looked like. He said that its mouth is round because it’s saying ‘whoo whoo.’

And of course, Thomas and Toby. Because you can’t ever draw too many trains. :)

Our boy likes to draw pictures, usually of trucks (big surprise). I’ve been occasionally snapping photos of some of his creations and thought I’d post a selection of what he’s been up to.

Fire truck “with the ladders down on the side and some hoses and nozzles and a siren on top that is on.” (the siren/light is on the top left with the lines coming out of it)

A painting of a bus, “a school bus, not like the town bus that Dad rides on sometimes because they have kind of a flat part on front.”

“This is a tow truck with a very long hook towing a broken car! (at the bottom) And you also wrote ‘sandwich’ on it because Mom was making a sandwich when you were writing it.” (The word starts with the ‘S’ in the middle and goes up to the ‘H’ near the top of the paper. It’s a little hard to tell on top of the other lines.)

He also really loves gluing things and is getting pretty good at doing it completely on his own, as long as he doesn’t get too carried away with making a huge glue puddle. He will draw things for me to cut out, and then he glues them together the way he wants.

First, a red dump truck. Of course.

And a baseball field. Of course. I love the little players he made and how he has the shortstop catching the ball. :)

He has also been very much into trains lately, Thomas the Tank Engine in particular, and likes me to cut out wheels and couplers for him to make engines and freight cars. He decides what each freight car is carrying and labels most of them. A lot of the trains are pulling baseball supplies, like bats, balls, gloves, pitchers mounds, etc. If you look closely, you might also find the cars with coal and people. Again, I cut the pieces and he does all the assembly and details.

And finally, two of my recent favorites.

First, a picture he drew before we left to walk to school, of us walking to school. On the right is Mom, with a happy Nora in the carrier. “She’s happy because she really likes to go for walks outside.” Jonah is in the middle and to the left is the sign for his school and then the building behind that with the path we walk on.

And while I was making lunch one day, he found a folded piece of paper and decided that it looked like a book, so he drew a picture of a truck and wrote some words. He was extremely excited to run over and show me his book where he wrote “JONAH RITES OBOT TRUCKS.” Then he turned it over to make a little rectangle on the back where he could write ‘Eugene Public Library’ just like the stickers on the real library books so it could go on the shelf with the ones we have checked out. He was a little disappointed that he “could only put a few letters for Eugene because those sticker rectangles are so small.”