5″x6″ acrylic on cardboard, 2012. A couple of years ago, whenever then-two-year-old Sonja was asked what she wanted for Christmas, she would only answer “A wind-up kitty.” My husband, who loves an internet hunt, ordered an assortment of waddling, jumping, and spinning cats. Sonja did not actually show much interest in any of them when she found mechanical kitties under the tree… I suspect that, to Sonja, a “wind-up kitty” sort of represented a Victorian, classic idea of what children recieved as gifts in books such as “The Night Before Christmas!” In the years since, we’ve gathered quite a collection of wind-up toys and have fun staging races and parades. This Hello Kitty is one of our favorites. Check out my wind-up monkey portrait here!