one sunny morning, there are three sleepy turtles sitting on my head…

there is elijah digging into my books saying, “buuuuuuuuk!”

run away!

this is elijah.

it’s hard to see, but his finger is turning into a caterpillar.  and of course, he’s eating it.

i bought a new drawing desk recently.  it’s set up in the living room facing the front yard.

i usually stay up and draw after elijah goes to bed.  i do some housework first before i get down to it.  i usually draw from 10 to 2 am-ish.

night is very quiet.  i try not to look out the window because i might see a ghost or a someone standing right at the window.  i can’t make an eye contact with them.

i used to draw non-stop without sleep otherwise i would lose interest in the drawing.  but i can’t do that anymore now that i have a baby.  elijah wakes up at 6 am most days, sometimes 5 am.  he’s instantly superawake and ready to go wild.  so i need to be ready for fun in the morning.

after one year of training, i am now capable of drawing one area per day, finishing step by step over several days without losing interest in my own work.

i sometimes go to the basement to draw.  i turn on a ‘curb your enthusiasm’ dvd and draw on the low coffee table, sitting on the floor.  i find myself laughing so hard even though i’ve already watched all the episodes a million times. i love larry david.  ‘can’t go on, must go on…’

until this point, i was doing my best to follow the patterns of real butterflies.  eventually i got bored, so i made up my own butterfly patterns as i finished the drawing.

here it is: “new wings”.

nowadays, my mr. man can play on his own for awhile.

especially when he gets a kick out of something, he can go on and on…

we bought him a lot of toys, but he’s more interested in ordinary objects like string. that’s okay — in a way, paul and i ended up buying those toys for ourselves.

what a magical toy the string is! he’s digging into it.

elijah is taking a nap. now it’s time to draw. i bought a second-hand small draft table with wheels. this way, i can draw no matter where elijah is.

oh, he’s up! ohayo~, elijah.

now he’s ready to eat the wheels~.

his charm always wins. let’s go walk around the house!

elijah fell asleep on the edge of the bed. i put pillows around him, but i was still worried that he might fall. i set my drawing on the dresser in the bedroom. this way, if he fell, i could jump and catch him — just like ichiro.