Tchaikovsky is COOL!

Or that's what Nikki says, anyway!

Little Artist

Nicholas has suddenly started drawing. Until a couple of weeks ago, his idea of drawing was take a pen(cil) and scribble indiscriminately. Now he is doing proper pictures!

I may have started it by helping him draw his dad and granddad on their Father's day cards by telling him to start with a circle for the head... what about adding arms/legs etc. I only 'helped' by making his lines thicker and darker when he decided that he needed to cover them in orange paint and green glitter...

Granddad                    Daddy

He has since spent less time focused on "writing" and created the occasional work of art - even going so far as to name them!

This whiteboard masterpiece is titled "Surgery" though I am fairly sure he doesn't understand what a surgery is. It is rather Picasso-esque with the person-within-a-face (on the right). Unfortunately, whiteboards are notoriously hard to photograph, so please forgive the reflections.

Today was the biggest progress as far as I am concerned. Completely unprompted, Nikki drew a picture that is quite clearly themed, but also actually looks like what it is meant to be! It is still obviously a preschooler's artwork, but you can quite obviously make out both the man and the car in this picture. It is, I think, his first independent piece of non-abstract art.

If I knew how, I would change the brightness to make the pencil lines stand out better.

Now I feel the need to brush up on my own artistic skills - if I don't progress beyond stick men soon, Nikki will catch me up!

Pirozhki

Pirozhki are wonderful Russian buns with a sweet or savory filling. I planned to make two fillings, but Nikki insisted we make some cheese ones, too. Next time I think I'll use white flour as they are a little dry with wholewheat.

I didn't take pictures while we were cooking - Nicholas and sticky bread dough are not what I want anywhere near my camera! We used this recipe for the dough and the meat filling, but I also made a traditional cabbage-and-egg filling, which I made up from memory (I finely cut about a third of a small cabbage and two hard boiled eggs and mixed them together).

Nikki was in charge of the food processor while we were preparing our fillings - this worked well enough, even if the cabbage was a bit too finely chopped. Unfortunately, he then half-pureed the onions, but I think they still did the job...