As recently as a month ago, Robin was more interesting in chewing on crayons or banging them together or dropping them on the floor.

Now he takes my hand, puts a crayon or chalk in it, and then pushes my hand to the drawing surface. (‘Draw something, Mom’.) I draw a circle, or a square, or a heart, or a crescent moon. He takes the chalk from me and he carefully colors it in.  He doesn’t quite fill it in perfectly, but he does it as well as I would if I weren’t being careful.  He’s better at triangles, worse at stars, and better with bigger shapes.

Later, I draw one line, and then another. “Two lines,” I say, when he points at both of them.  He takes the chalk and draws a line. I draw a series of dots. He taps the chalk on the pavement in the same way.

As we’re cleaning up, he draws an amorphous closed shape and colors it in. I think it looks like a crescent moon, but when I ask him about it, he looks confused, and makes Raymond draw him one. He colors it in, and then points at it repeatedly.

(The other night, he started saying ‘moon’ a lot. Well, ‘nin’. He mutters it to himself now while playing. On the other hand, he out-stubborned his parents the other night when we tried to get him to say anything on request.)

When he was smaller, he used to put his fingers in our mouths as we talked, apparently to feel how we did it. I’m reminded of this when he wraps my fingers around the crayon.

Now, in his playpen with some crayons and his coloring binder, he’s whining as he tries to draw, I think, a triangle.

Oops, I’m wrong. It’s a star. (I can tell from his reaction when I try to help him.)