#conversations I never thought I'd have with my son

Me (reading from The Story of the World about Shamshi Adad, the Assyrian king, and thinking that maybe this isn't the best reading material): "When he conquered a city, he chopped off the heads of all the leaders and put them up on stakes around the city."

Calvin: "They did the same thing in Shakespeare's time."

Me (somewhat skeptical): "Really?"

Calvin: "Yes. They cut off the heads of traitors and put them outside the Tower of London. And other places."

Me: "Where did you hear that?"

Calvin: "I read it in a book about Shakespeare. A book you gave me." (My emphasis. Because really, that needed to be emphasized).

And now for a message from Calvin

I have not left town again, and do I intend to get back to regular broadcasting, but seeking out the swing of things and preparing for this weekend's big book sale has taken more time than I imagined this week, and one might say that I am giving the camera a break. It needed it.

We have been busy. Calvin is practicing his lines for the Percy Jackson play our homeschooling group is doing, and he's also sailing right through his variety of "school" subjects. He's reached some chapters on money in the Math-U-See book, and there's been some erratic capitalization in his writing lately so we've starting looking more closely at sentence structure, most notably at nouns. Piano, the Mayas, reading, and lots and lots of library time, that's been the tune of this week, so I don't have much to say, leaving me with neither pictures nor paragraphs for posting.

Calvin, however, has written one journal entry for every day this week I think, building up to a "chapter book" about his trip. So, in Calvin's words:

"I'm evolving"

To file under the category of Kids Say The Darndest Things...

After going to the Field Museum in Chicago Calvin has had a pretty strong interest in evolution and prehistoric times. We've been slowly putting Antarctica to bed and following the path of these newest interests, so when we were looking for a family video to watch recently we took advantage of streaming from Netflix and watched Ape to Man, a History Channel special.

I'm no longer surprised when our five year old sits rapt in front of that kind of show, but I was a bit surprised when the following day, after I asked him what he'd been playing amongst (albeit not with) some other homeschooling kids at the Friday gathering, he answered, almost with exasperation, "Playing Ape to Man. I'm evolving," as if this was the most natural thing in the world and, geeze, I just should have known.

Dragon's Milk

Though the weather feels more like a week in late May, it turns out that July is just a couple of days off. That happened while I wasn't looking. There is just one day left in swimming class, and less than a week until Independence Day, as Calvin is calling it now that he's been reading up on the Fourth of July. Our vegetable garden is really enjoying the sunny, cooler days, and because we water it's not overly concerned about the drought, either, so it's looking a bit like a miniature rainforest. The June bugs are out and bashing themselves into the windows making, such a ruckus at night that the cat won't sit down. Warm sun, cool breeze, long days—not bad, but it seems like not much is going on, either. I think we're waiting for summer to start.

Calvin went to Dangerous Dudes story time at the library today. He colored dragon pages, listened to stories, made a knight, and had cookies and lemonade for snack. And there was a bit of a snafu over the lemonade. The librarian had labeled it "dragon's milk" which in our house is a favorite beer from the New Holland Brewing Company. This was a sans parent event, so I was sitting outside the room reading and occasionally watching events through the glass wall. Because I could hear slightly I'd caught the drink name, and I wondered what family secrets the boy might be telling when he was conspiratorially whispering in the librarian's ear as she passed out cups of the questionable liquid. Turns out he was just telling her he knew it wasn't really dragon's milk because "there is no such thing", a response I think to the girl across the table who was entirely grossed out by the concept. Considerate of him to keep such knowledge to a whisper, huh?

Patience is a difficult virtue

The temperatures climbed all the way into the forties today for the first time in nearly a week, this on the heels of snow, ice, and violent storms, a day each and in quick succession. The weather is being down right weird.

About the word weird, Calvin read a book to me today while we were grocery shopping (this is a fun way to grocery shop, by the way), and in so doing came across the word "weird" which he first asked how to pronounce, and then, before I could answer, said "oh wait, I know that one, that says 'weird.' In this family one just has to know that word." The somewhat elderly lady standing nearby in the squash seemed to find that hilarious. I found it interesting not because he called me weird, but because he was speaking with the sentence structure of Baum's Oz books, but reading to me from A. A. Milne's original Winnie-The-Pooh. I think I prefer it that way around, as opposed to his reading the Oz books with Eeyore-like gloominess or Pooh-like inanity.

I suppose it's a hazard of the hobby. We are, after all, actively reading six books between the two of us, not including the audio book I listen to while running. Calvin is working through the original Winnie-The-Pooh and Dinosaurs Before Dark, and I just started Journey to the End of the Night and The Monk in the Garden, plus the Prose Edda, and I am still reading Oz aloud. Quiet times are a whole new joy now that Calvin is reading so independently.

We're also still traveling through Spain to some extent, and today we got a picture from the actual travelers of a fantastic castle they just visited on the road to Barcelona. Perhaps if we box ourselves carefully enough we can join them?

And my hand is continuing to heal, but what they say about age and healing is true, and the going is slow. It has taken me a half-hour to pick out this post with the working fingers I have, which is why I've stuck to mostly short and sweet as of late, but I've missed writing, so here I am. It's the little things I miss the most, like fluid typing, adept chopping for dinner preparation, and painless driving. That being said, it has been a real treasure to see just how helpful, how willingly helpful, Calvin is by nature. I have a pretty fantastic husband in that manner, too, and it really can't be long now, can it? I guess you can count that as two things I am eagerly awaiting—spring and usable fingers. Patience is definitely a difficult virtue.