Here are the caricatures we had done of the kids in Central Park when we were in NYC a few weeks ago. Apparently Enthusio got the idea to have this done back in May when Reasonable Man took him to Legoland. RM didn't want to pay fifty bucks to have it done at Legoland, but Central Park is rife with artists willing to capture your likeness in Sharpie, so we didn't have a hard time finding someone to make Enthusio's dream come true for a much more reasonable $15.

He knew exactly what he wanted, and instructed the artist thusly: "I want to be like Batman riding a skateboard, only not with wheels -- with rockets." The artist didn't even seem to think this was a weird request -- he just nodded and went to work. At some point he asked Enthusio to make a face like a superhero. Enthusio complied:

Yeah, I've never seen superhero making that face either. Enthusio's picture didn't have that expression. He seemed a little disappointed when it was done -- RM and I think he was maybe embarrassed at the size of his teeth in the picture. We assured him that that was just the way caricatures are drawn, which is true, but between you and me, the teeth are actually not all that exaggerated. I imagine he'll grown into them some day.

While Enthusio was having his picture done, Mermaid decided that she'd like to have one done too. The guy who did Enthusio's had a portrait to do first, but he said he'd be available in about an hour if we could come back. Mermaid surprised us by agreeing that she wanted to wait -- it was pretty humid out and she'd not been enjoying the weather, so I had figured she'd want to head back to Aunt Dana's apartment sooner rather than later, but once Mermaid makes up her mind about something, that's pretty much that. So we took a little walk past the Central Park Zoo and had a snack, then headed back to wait for the artist guy to finish his portrait, and in the meantime, another caricature artist set up his stuff nearby, so we had him do Mermaid's instead.

I may not have mentioned it before, but this past year, Mermaid has decided she doesn't want to smile with her teeth showing. The first reason she gave was that her friend Allyn doesn't smile with her teeth showing, and later on, she told me that when she smiles with her teeth showing in a picture, it makes her "look like a ghost." Yeah, I don't know either. Anyway, no way no how was she going to show her teeth to the caricature artist. No big loss, since as you can see from the finished picture above, he captured her Mona Lisa smile perfectly. He also did a very good job of following her instructions that she wanted to be singing with the Beatles -- I'm not sure how well you can see it in the picture, but it's pretty clear that he's drawn, from left to right, Paul, John and George. (George has enormous ears in the picture. Did George have enormous ears? I have no recollection of that.) Of course, Mermaid did have to point out to me the other night that Paul is holding his guitar the wrong way (right-handed instead of left), but otherwise we all think the artist did a pretty awesome job.