Jenny's Picture

Jenny grinned as she immersed a chubby finger into the red paint. She was going to make the best ever picture for Grammy! It was quiet in the house because her younger brother was napping. She was five and mommy said she didn’t have to nap anymore, unless she was crabby; drawing didn’t make her crabby, so she liked to draw while Joshy slept.

Her tongue sticking out, she carefully dabbed a large dot onto the white paper. With a fingertip, she drew a shaky circle. Sitting back, she examined it carefully and added a couple smaller circles near the bottom of the page. Whispering quietly to herself, the little girl continued adding random-seeming dots and squiggly lines. She stopped to study her picture and, nodding her head with a wide grin, she carefully began adding some blue dots. A door slammed and she jumped, smearing a line of blue all the way across her paper.

Frowning, she contemplated her picture. It was ruined! The red and blue paint was all mixed up! She looked closer; with a puzzled frown, she saw a long line of purple paint across her paper. Jenny shook her hair out of her face. She carefully outlined the red circle with blue paint -- it turned purple! She excitedly began making yellow dots and covering them with red paint; they turned orange! Next, she tried blue and yellow; it made green! Soon her paper was covered with a rainbow of dots and lines and sweeping waves of color. So were her fingers!

Smiling, she carefully wrote her name at the bottom of the page. Tapping her lip with a paint-smeared finger, she thought about a title for her creation. She didn’t know how to spell many words yet; she suddenly sat up and wrote F-R-O-G at the top of the page and ran to show Grammy her beautiful picture.