exploring art

Day 21.

Wow, three weeks that I've kept this going, yay! I was skeptical myself that I'd be able to keep it going, and here we are. So far it hasn't been that hard coming up with something every day, so that's a good sign.

I took Dylan to "art school" this morning - I pushed the double stroller through the snowy sidewalks - that was freaking hard. Dylan wanted to go by herself today - she didn't want me to stay in the class. That's the nice thing about this class - parents are totally welcome for the whole thing (it's ages 2-5), but if you want to leave, they are great with that too! It's a small class of only 5 kids including Dylan, so I know the teacher gives her lots of attention (especially since every other parent/nanny stays). She did great and came home with two books she made all about textures. She called one "textureville" and was talking about it and trying to read it to Noah for the next hour that we were at home. It was hilarious. She kept saying to him, "Don't you want to read about textureville? It's TEXTUREVILLE! You might like it!" OVER and OVER and OVER again. I was cracking up. He just kept saying, "I playing ball, Dyl-win. I playing ball, Dyl-win." It was so cute.

But back to art school...

I am grateful for the time I got with just Noah today.

What a joy it was to spend an hour and a half with ONLY Noah at the Hyde Park Art Center: walking around galleries, examining and naming the art, sitting at Cafe Istria drinking green tea (me, not him) and having graham crackers (him, not me), and going to the Art Reference library to look at books. I found a really cool book of Children's book covers from 1890-1960. So neat, especially for a graphic designer.

We had such a great time together! We spent about 15 minutes of the time throwing this portable brush I had in my bag across the floor and watching it loudly bounce across the cement. Then we would race to see who could get to it first. The games an almost-2 year old makes up - they can be fun!

It was lovely to be somewhere with him that we could explore and let HIM take the lead on this - since so often it's Dylan setting the agenda as the older child when we're somewhere all together. And it was important to be away from home so I didn't take the time with only one kid to "get stuff done" instead of just enjoying my wonderful, energetic boy. I look forward to many more wednesday mornings exploring together.