i want to preface this post by saying that, this morning, aiden got to my laptop keys and took off about 20 of them. the shift key is among the majorly injured so this post will have no capital letters.

that being said, i wanted to add some pictures of the art book aiden and i recently made. oprah was having a "clean up your house" episode and one of the suggestions was to take pictures of your child's art work, upload the pictures to a photo site and make a book thus saving yourself the storage space for all the art work. as part of the episode, snapfish.com was giving away a free 8x11 photo book. so i, and about a gazillion other oprah viewers (judging from the connection speed), logged on to make a book for my little artist. just to be fair, i will be making one of these for logan after his preschool projects finally make their way home. due to overwhelming demand, my book is not set to arrive for 4-7 weeks!



the artist prepares for his masterpiece...

...the cover for the art book


just a little goofing around with mom and the camera first

this is one of my favorite pieces...we'll call this aiden's "basketball phase". he took an art class through the park district and we were supposed to just goof around after completing one of the projects. he had me pencil in a basketball for him....then he created this "ode to a basketball"

one day logan and aiden went to memaw's house and came home with a bunch of flowers that they cut out for me. i saved them in a zip lock bag with this note. crowded space or not, i'm not throwing these out when aiden's book arrives!

another masterpiece...aiden colored himself last wednesday. just when we think we are past the "coloring on stuff that isn't paper" phase, he does it again! i think he was mimicking mommy putting on makeup because he did one line on each eyelid, color on his lips & some on each cheek. i sure hope i don't look like the joker after i'm finished with my makeup every morning. maybe he's trying a subtle intervention with me!

just for posterity...and...as another comment on the loveliness of the 2-year old phase, i should also note that last friday began with aiden washing my left contact down the bathroom sink while i was downstairs fulfilling his request for more milk. is it sad that i sometimes want a 4th child only so SOMEONE isn't in some sort of crazy stage and is being all sweet? i don't think i'll be able to bear it when bray starts all this non-sense...he is such a sweetie pie right now!