Diamond Tiara

Among Madeleine's artwork today was this:

Just a nice old bone-chilling, shudder-inducing skeleton girl with the black hollow eyes of death and a spiky instrument of torture stabbing her in the head.

Or, as Madeleine put it: "That's her HORN that's sticking up from her HEART-SHAPED bun!  She's a magic girl!  She can even do a REPLACE spell!"

As in: she can replace your soul with a life-sucking demonic spirit that can never be exorcised??


The magic girl appears in several other of Madeleine's illustrations:

She looks a little friendlier in this picture.  She definitely scares me less.  But she still scares me.

At first I thought this was a picture of a stocking.  With a loony-bin escapee popping out from inside.  I had no idea what the object on the left was.  A spiky-headed angel for the Christmas tree?

Turns out I was totally wrong about the WHOLE thing.  First of all, the angel is actually the magic girl, yet again.  As for the other girl...

MADELEINE: The little girls are SLIDING down into the mud!  And (pointing to the head of the loony-bin lady) that's her TIARA.  Her name is Diamond Tiara!

Suuuure, her name is Diamond Tiara.  And the voices in her head are just her magic little elf friends telling her that it's NOT a bad thing to suffocate her bedmate with a pillow.  Life is magical and sparkly!  She's a PRINCESS!  SHEEE'S AAAAA PRIIIIIIINCEEEEEEESSSSSSS!


Anyway, speaking of artwork, Julia had an important announcement today.

JULIA: Mommy?  I want to go to the Louvre!
ME: (in surprise) Uh, the Louvre?  The museum in France?
JULIA: Yeah!  Because Mommy!  Remember that FACE that I said I RECOGNIZED?  Well, it's at the Louvre! 

Let me back up for a minute.  Julia recently told me about a face that she knew she'd seen before but she couldn't remember where.  It all comes together for me now as I realize she has been referring to the Mona Lisa.  Apparently she and some of her friends looked through a book of famous artwork today and read about the Louvre. 

Happily, the Mona Lisa is not ALL that Julia got out of this museum book.

JULIA: And Mom?  Did you know that a LOT of painters liked to paint pictures of, like, NAKED people??  And there are even sculptures of naked people!
ME: Yup, it was pretty common for painters to have models take off their clothes so that the painters could work on studying the human body.
JULIA: And Mom?  One of the pictures had, like, this naked lady, and there was somethng near her BUM, and it looked to me like she was POOPING!

Yes.  Leave it to my kids to take something as seemingly pure as famously renowned artwork at the Louvre and find a way to make it about potty talk.

And here's some food for thought: maybe the Mona Lisa was really Madeleine's magic girl in a previous incarnation.  Hmmmmm...next time you see a painting of that famous face, dare her to do a REPLACING spell on you.