for you to decide

Yesterday evening, Timothy and I were on the front porch. I was moving my petunias in for the night because it's still too cold to leave them out and he was scribbling on the walkway and driveway with chalk. His scribbles are starting to take shape. He draws lopsided circles, which he calls either O's or circles depending on his mood. He also draws jagged lines, which he calls M's or double's for W. His final talent is a semicircle, which he calls the moon. Paul and I make a show of being impressed and encourage him to do more, but we haven't spent any concentrated time with him on drawing or writing. He often asks us to write his name, Luke, Daddy and Momma for him, and we always say the letters as we write them. He draws at school as well, but from what he brings home, there is no direction or instruction. As I was picking up a pot of flowers, Tim said 'Momma, see. T - i - m. Tim." I went to see, and was startled and finally amazed. I called Paul to see as well. He took a photo. Neither of us had much to say. I think we were too surprised to put our thoughts into words. It must have been on Paul's mind last night as much as it was on mine because as we fixed dinner, put the boys to bed, and watched a little TV, each of us brought the incident up, sort of marveling at what we'd seen, but we're a little unsure of what we saw. (This is beginning to sound like the stories people tell of seeing the face of Jesus or Mary in their oatmeal.)

So I'm going to let you be the jury. What do you think? Did Tim write his name? Should we be as impressed as we are or is it common for a 27 month old to write his/her name?

I haven't asked him for a repeat performance. He has access to all kinds of writing utensils. If he wants to do it again, he will.

P.S. In the past some of you have told me that you want to leave a comment but you don't have a Google account. You don't have to have one. Just click the 'anonymous' button. This allows you to write a comment. Then you can put your name at the end. The only difference is that if you have a Google account, it puts your name on the comment for you.