The Boys

I have some super cute cousins who live just a few blocks away from me. I want to share two things, one from each of them:

Aidan was showing me how to play with playdough. Here's an excerpt.

Aidan: I made a nest!

Me: That is one big egg.

Aidan: Yeah, that’s a egg.

Me: I bet you could fit three small eggs so you can hatch lots of birds if you wanted.

Jakob (from the other room): How about 16?

Aidan: No, five-teen. Brittany, will you help me?

I was sketching at my aunt’s house, and her son, Jakob, was watching me. I was adding different types of hatch-marks when Jakob asked me why everything was dirty. He pointed to my texture marks. I told him how they were supposed to show that everything I drew reacted differently to light and held colors in a different way and felt different, and those marks were meant to show that different materials felt different. Then I played a game with my sister, aunt, uncle, and friend.

Hours later, when we were done playing, I see Jakob at the table with crayons and scissors and tape. I go ask him what he’s doing, and he shows me a drawing he’s been working on. Then he tells me to feel the different things.

A cat with fur had fringed paper taped to it for hair. The cliff wall had a rock protrusion, a crumpled paper taped on. There was a den of baby cats with hay, slices of paper layered.

My favorite part was that the entrance to the den had fire launcher things…a piece of orange construction paper colored red and roughed up—this one he told me to rub really fast and it would get hot like fire, which was pretty much using the friction effect of sandpaper to help you feel the heat! He also made smooth metal by putting tape on purple, a slight ridge on a robot, and a gas can. I cannot remember why he wanted the robot and the gas can, but it was a big deal.

It came with an extra piece of paper. When I told him, “Whoops, you gave me two,” he replied, “That’s for if you want to make one.”

They are cute boys, huh? :)