Venus Flytrap

"What should we do today?"

He sat thinking for a while. A long while.

"Victor?"

"I'm thinking."

"How about something from the Amazon?" I suggested.

"Amazon?"

"Oh, I mean the rainforest."

"Oh, I thought you meant the store or something."

"No, I meant the Amazon rainforest...since you've been talking about it," I clarified. His class has been studying the rainforests.

He thought about that for a moment. "Okay, a Venus flytrap!"

He searched and searched making comments about many of the options. He picked a weird scorpion, spider, combo thing that I didn't want to do. He asked if I could do it over the weekend. I prodded him to pick something for today. He finally picked this one of a regular Venus flytrap plant. This plant was more elaborate than most of the others, but I finished in relatively short order.

"You should have drawn a fly being eaten," he said when I was finished. He looked at it some more and added, "Or my name being eaten."

"Yeah, I should have," I agreed. "That would have been cool!"

A Chomper Plant from Plants vs. Zombies

"A Chomper plant from Plants vs. Zombies," he told me without hesitation.

I like it when he gets on a roll with a particular reference. Unfortunately, I messed up right away on this one and had to start over.

Once he had finished his breakfast he came over to my side of the table. "Are you going to make the teeth sharp?" he asked as he walked over. "Oh! You did make them sharp. Cool!"

I smiled at him, pleased with his reaction.

"Can you do the purple and green?"

"No," I said. I likely had the time but still don't want to introduce color. It's hard enough for me to complete these in 20-30 minutes each morning. Even just coloring things in takes longer than you'd expect it to.

"How about I bring it home and you do it at home on the weekend?"

"If you remember to bring it home. You haven't brought any home this year," I said with a wounded tone. Well, maybe one, I thought to myself.

He didn't respond.

To make up for yesterday I added the "vs." to his nameplate. I still messed it up, but it's sort of readable. It seemed silly to write "vs. Zombies" on this one and not yesterday's so I wrote "vs. Chomper" instead. He laughed when he saw it and kept repeating, "Victor vs. Chomper. Victor vs. Chomper. That's funny!"

How about my letters on some flowers...

How about my letters on some flowers...

This one is one of my own personal favorites so far. I loved the idea he had to put his letters on flowers. We happened to have a tall glass vase of gladiolas on the kitchen table, which is probably why he had the idea in the first place. With the vase in front of me, I repeated to myself what my 8th grade art teacher taught me. "Draw what you see, not what you think you see," he would repeat. On the rare occasions that I find myself drawing something from sight, I repeat that phrase over and over to remind myself of this simple yet critical lesson in drawing.

Victor and I weren't sure what type of flowers to draw. We brainstormed lots of ideas, but none seemed easy enough to do quickly. I wasn't confident that the gladiolas would look nice either. So I just made up these spiky daisy looking things. I like the way the letters feel hidden in the flower bulbs. I was pleased with myself again today, feeling that my 8th grade art skills were surfacing in a good way over 20 years after my art class.

He looked at it and felt it was missing something, so he grabbed the Sharpie. Although I should have been encouraging, I felt a strong impulse to snatch it back. "You're going to ruin it!" I thought to tell him. But I bit my tongue. For some reason he felt that it should be surrounded by a bowl. There it is drawn around the vase. I'm glad he felt confident enough to add to the picture, but in all honesty, I do feel like he took away from a drawing I was proud of. I have a feeling I'm going to discourage him contributing in the future. I'm a terrible father aren't I?