Observing kid development is so bloody cool.
In the past two weeks, Bean’s manual dexterity has improved dramatically. Check out her latest picture of her and I. I’m the sad looking individual. No, I don’t have arms, but I do have eyebrows! Bean is the blue character who does have arms. Now, we have to work on a happy mama picture. Perhaps we should do some analysis of Bean’s pictures? Naaah, forget that. Lets just enjoy watching.
Grow family. Grow! 
Wow, that is very sophisticated artwork for someone so young! And it looks like a kitty in the lower right-hand corner in red. Or maybe a chicken, as the case may be.
I wonder about the differences in the creative drawings of boys vs. girls at this age — another little girl that we know the same age as M and Bean also draws recognizable people. M just draws the letter M (go figure), architecture and vehicles.
So sweet… I have a very similar picture framed in my bathroom–the first recognizable person that my son ever drew–of me! And it includes nipples and a belly button too–still makes us laugh every time we look at it!
He’s five now and we were recently invited into his classroom to check out the “portraits” that each child had painted of their parents. It was hysterical and so fun to look at each of the portraits and try to guess which one was of us! So adorable, I’ll never recycle those projects or forget those sweet little memories…
So cool! And I thought it was a kitty in red as well. (In fact I was so impressed by the kitty that I had to comment!)
Regarding Melissa’s comment above, I’d put those differences down to individual development or temperament rather than gender. My girl, who is 2 years and 10 months, has only started making representational drawings in the last month or so–she’s done rainbows, planets, and monkeys, but never a person. But one little boy we know who’s about her age has been drawing people since he was 2 and a half.
Actually, I was curious about this and after I wrote the comment yesterday, I did some searching and found that there are gender differences in preschooler drawings! One study showed that judges could tell the gender of the preschool artist by viewing only the artwork. There are other differences as well, such as boys preferring warmer colors and preferring thinner drawing tools.
The parts that were most interesting is (a) Human Figure Drawing (HFD) is studied so much, LOL, and (b) that there are lots of studies about human figures wearing clothing vs. being transparent, with kids draw actual articles inside the body like in an x-ray. I think I remember doing that as a child.
@Leah: about the drawing nipples — on Friday in a locker room after swimming, my son saw another woman’s breasts and went on to announce rather loudly that she had “oobies” like me, except that her “oobies” were really small. I’m sure she really appreciated the comments about her body in public by a random 3-year-old. Thankfully she seemed to find the whole thing hysterical…
Hysterical! Thank goodness for understanding people who also have a sense of humor!
Cripes, sorry about the delay in response. Thanks for the research Melissa. Great stuff. The kitty actually was a joint project, Bean and me. She does some pretty mean spiders though. It was the eyebrows that got me. She looked at the picture. Looked at me and said. You need eyebrows. What kid thinks about eyebrows?!?!