Portrait of a scary-looking grandmother

Yesterday, BallFiend had his final ever appointment with the Maternal & Child Health Nurse for his three-and-a-half year old assessment. Gran came along to help with the kid-wrangling.

The nurse measured and weighed him to check he has been growing (turns out he has, surprise surprise). Then did a vision screening test (he failed the test when checking his right eye, so now he needs to be assessed by an optometrist). Then a couple of other tests to check his development, including the draw-a-person test. Suffice to say, he blitzed it!

The nurse showed him what to do by doing her own drawing of a face (circle for a head, two eyes, mouth and nose):

The nurse's original picture for BallFiend to copy (orange crayon).
The green ears, arms, hands, legs, and feet were
added by BallFiend after he finished his own picture (below).

Then she asked him to draw a face too (actually, she asked him to 'draw Gran'). Well, not only did he draw the head, eyes, mouth, nose, arms and legs (which is what most 3.5 year olds will do), he went on to add ears, hair, teeth, eyebrows, feet, hands (which is something that kids don't usually do until 5 or 6 years of age).

A portrait of a rather scary-looking Gran with very pointy teeth!

After the test, he kept drawing, which is when he
coloured in the left eye and added the 'cheek' mark.

I was so surprised! He rarely shows interest in drawing, painting or other such arty things at home and when he does draw it is usually lots of scribbles; he sometimes draws when at childcare, but again it is always lots of scribbles. So watching him draw a face was amazing. Apparently because he added so much extra detail, it means he is very intelligent. But of course, I already knew that! Afterall, what parent doesn't know their child is a genius from the moment they are born!!

BallFiend then went with Gran to spend the day at his grandparents house. This is our new childcare arrangement: instead of him going to the childcare centre two days a week, he will now just go for one day a week there, and one day with his grandparents. They get a kid to play with, we get to save $80 a day on childcare fees.

A post-script: this afternoon, BallFiend did a few more drawings of people (said he was drawing Gran again) and this time he included a neck, fingers and toes. Actually one of the Gran pictures had two necks! Then he did a picture of himself, spewing. Presumably this is because, we had dinner with Gran and GrandPaul yesterday and on the drive home, BallFiend did a massive boke all over the backseat of our (new!) car. Poor him, poor us. Lucky for me DeepSpice did the clean up. Lucky for DeepSpice, this little former Girl Guide lived up to the 'be prepared' motto, by having plenty of wash cloths and a bottle of water on-hand in the car.

Still not sure what caused the vomiting. Dinner was Salmon Risotto, followed by a cheese course (Brie), and then homemade vanilla ice-cream! BallFiend loved the Brie and GrandPaul kept giving him more and more, despite DeepSpice and my protestations. So I reckon it was either a mild allergic reaction to something he ate (because there was also a rash on his skin), or (more likely) too much fat from the Brie.

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