Nate Nate

More on Math

When you're a mathaholic, you really, really like doing math.  Which is why Nate, who started the 3rd grade program on April 1, is now about 2/3 of the way through the 6th grade program.  He's doing upwards of 2 hours a day, still loving every minute of it.  Some snippets:

--The other day we called his assigned tutor to ask about a problem that neither of us understood.  She explained how to do it, but I still didn't quite get it, so I asked her to explain it a different way.  In the time it took her to give me an alternate explanation, Nate, who had understood the first explanation, solved the problem and the 3 others needed to pass the section and move on, and then shushed his tutor with the words, "Shh!  It's giving me a new lecture and I need to listen!  Goodbye!" and hung up on her.

-- He's gotten a few problems wrong from sheer lack of vocabulary and life experience.  In reviewing his work, I've learned that Nate doesn't know what "formerly" means (as in, if the item is 25% off and formerly cost $62, how much is it now?), has no experience with a "budget" (as in, if it would cost $5 per person to survey 100,000 people to find out their views on an issue, and the budget for the project is only $10,000, is this a good time to use a sample?), and doesn't know from "candid photos" (again with the samples, if the yearbook editors want to ensure that each kid is in at least one candid photo, should they use a sample?).  And, in the bigger picture, he just doesn't have the judgment to really understand when it makes sense to use a sample.  Every time this issue comes up, it cracks me up; it just underscores the absurdity of a tiny little person who is not quite 4 feet tall doing 6th grade math.

--It's really, really humbling to try and keep up.  The kid learned base 5 the other day, and while both Steve and I actually physically shuddered when it popped up in a lecture, Nate took to it immediately.  (To be fair, Steve got it very quickly too; I was a bit behind but kind of get it now ... mostly.  Or at least sort of.)  By the end of that day, he was completely fluent in base 3, base 4, base 7, any other base we gave him, and, as kids in the new millenium are apparently expected to be, binary code (computer language).  To which I say: What.Ever.  I am fine with being left behind on that one.

It's like math is his native tongue.  And we have approximately 800 pieces of scratch paper covered in equations littered all over the house to prove it.

"Uh Oh, I Just Spit Out Something Hard. I Do Not Know What It Was. And By the Way, Have You Seen My Tooth?"

Guess who lost his very first tooth at dinner tonight?!

 
Guess who then called each of his preschool buddies, one by one, to tell them the big news?!

 
It was extremely exciting.  There we were, just eating our dinner, when Jonah said, "I just spit out something hard." 

"What was it?" I asked.  He did not know.

A minute later, I noticed a gaping hole where his tooth had been and put two and two together.  And then the exciting hunt on the floor began.  Those baby teeth are awfully small, aren't they?  Luckily, we found it, and now both boys are in their beds, yelling at me to go to bed already so that the Tooth Fairy can come.  Good times.

Belated news: What a fantastic Mother's Day!  The guys took me up to a giant rock with a beautiful view of the Bay and terrifying, deadly drops at every turn.  And what better way to celebrate my special day than by having 15 near-heart attacks while chasing overly-excited kids?  Still, even I have to admit that it was pretty fun, and the guys loved every minute of it.

 
 
 
On the way home, Nate took a turn playing Rolando, his current favorite iPhone app, which involves a lot of turning and twisting the phone to make the character roll around.  And thus we learned that a twisty, turny game and a twisty, turny drive home down the hills do not mix.

"Ugh," Nate said suddenly.  "I want to stop playing.  I am going to blarf."  And with that, he yakked all over the backseat.  The thing is, gross as it is, horrifying as it is, sad as it is, it's never not funny.  And once he got it out, he felt much better.

"Poor Jonah!" I thought.  "I wonder if he's grossed out."  So I turned around to check, and wouldn't you know it, Jonah was so grossed out that he, too, had quietly yakked his lunch all over the backseat.  And, without being too graphic, let's just say that it was the same lunch that Nate had had.

Now that, as it turns out, is REALLY never not funny.  Steve and I laughed so hard that we almost joined them.

Nate was unfazed.  He insisted that we stop for the ice cream we had promised.  Since both boys were pretty much covered in blarf, we declined.  And I still can't talk about it without giggling.

 

I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means

"Moooooooommmmmmm!" Jonah called from the office.  "How do you spell 'duh?'"

"Duh?  Like, duhhh?"

"No, DUH.  Like, 'I forgot DUH coffee.'"

"What?  You mean dumb?  Like, 'Oh no, I forgot the coffee, how dumb?'"

[Exasperated] "No, DUH.  Like, 'I forgot DUH crayons.'"

I just don't get it.  "I'm sorry Jonah, but I don't know what you mean.  Duh, I forgot the crayons?"

Jonah: "NOOO!!! Like the special word duh you say with forgot!  Like 'I forgot duh something!'"

Apparently, he thinks the past tense of "to forget" is "forgot duh."  Followed by the object.  Nate and I had a good laugh at his expense.  This is what happens when a guy still can't quite pronounce "th."

*************

Another Jonah gem: In thinking about parakeets today, Jonah became very sad when he realized that his pal Kate's beloved parakeet Joey grew old and died without ever getting to get married and have baby parakeets.  "Well," I tried to explain, "Joey lived with a family of people who loved him, so he didn't want to have any baby parakeets."

"Well," Jonah asked, "if parakeets live with people, then when do they ever get married and have babies?  When do they do the special parakeet dance?  Where do baby parakeets come from?"

Parakeet dance?

I explained that while parakeets live in the wild, there might not be enough food and stuff for ALL the world's parakeets in the wild, so some of the babies grow up to come live with nice people instead of other parakeets.

"Oh, I see," said Jonah, clearly relieved.  "The baby parakeets get born, and then they have a niiiice time at the pet store, and then they go live with their families."

Yes, I believe that's exactly how it works.

**********************

Nate had a dramatic realization today.  We've been reading some hilarious young Nate and Jonah stories in our new blog book, one of which the guys have insisted on hearing over and over (it involves 2 year old Jonah sadly telling me that someone took away a train at school and then gleefully revealing that the train-taker was actually him).  With each dramatic retelling, the guys were laughing harder and harder, until Nate abruptly stopped laughing and commented, "You know, it gets less funny every time you tell it."

It goes both ways, dear.

 

Santa Barbara in the Springtime

And what Southern California adventure would be complete without a visit to our old haunts?  Since we were passing through LA, we decided to do a quick stop at West Hollywood park, site of our every afternoon between 2004 and 2007.  I know I've posted a lot recently about Nate and the big changes and all that, but let me just say that it was pretty emotional to visit the park where 2005 Nate used to do nothing but trace the words on the signs, and 2011 Nate goes on all of the play structures.  Including the LA area's leading candidate for eventual litigation, the Slide of A Great Injury Will (Likely) Happen Here:
Nate loved it and went on it 5 times.  In a word, awesome. 

We then headed over to Crazy Fish, an event I had been eagerly anticipating for months.  Crazy Fish turned out to be closed for spring break.  I cannot even go there in my mind.  It was very sad.

Happily, better times awaited us in Santa Barbara, where we got to visit with the very wonderful Grandpa Toshi and Grandma Debbie.  Poor Nate ended up with a 24 hour bug and spent a lot of the time sleeping, but we left him the good hands of Grandma D and took Jonah to the zoo to see the new baby giraffe, as well as to slide down the concrete mountain about 800 times. 

We were sad to say goodbye, but Robearto needed to come home. 

 
All in all, an excellent spring break. 

The Happiest Place on Earth. Until 2 p.m.

Next stop: Dismeyland (tm: Jonah)!  Everyone was very excited.  We arrived in Anaheim late in the afternoon, so after we checked into the Dismeyland Hotel (unclear if anyone else finds that funny, but it continues to crack us up), we walked around Downtown Dismey for a while and ended up at the Rainforest Cafe for dinner, where both of our guys were somewhat terrorized by the menacing tropical storms that occur every five minutes or so (note: not an exaggeration).  At 9:30, Jonah was thrilled to see that he could enjoy the fireworks show from his very own hotel bed.  Nate, who had fallen asleep at his customary 8:01, could not be woken.

Early the next morning, according to the plan we'd had for months, we started our Dismeyland day with a breakfast at Goofy's Kitchen.  Until we got to the restaurant and learned that it would be $120 for the four of us.  For breakfast.  For 2 kids who each eat a single pancake.  I'm all for splurging when you're on vacation, but that wasn't a tough call even for me, particularly since our kids not only don't actually care whether they meet Goofy or not, but are actually significantly more likely to be terrified by him.  So we abruptly steered them into the restaurant next door, where they were perfectly happy to eat their pancake amid 1960s decor and an absence of human-sized rodents.  Amusingly, they never realized that they didn't actually eat breakfast in Goofy's Kitchen.  Apparently their expectations are low.

So, Dismeyland.  Long-time readers may recall that Jonah enjoyed a bunch of rides on his last trip, about a year and a half ago.  Now, it seems, he's a little more cautious, or maybe his brother has rubbed off on him.  He was gung-ho to ride the Buzz Lightyear ride, but then he decided it was too scary to make the plane go up, so we instead spent the ride going around in a circle.  And after one ride, he decided that he'd had enough.  Over the rest of the day, the guys allowed themselves to be convinced to go on a grand total of four rides, all of which we had to call "cruises" to assure Nate that they were just like the nice tame boat ride at Legoland.  And three of them, the Storybook Cruise, Small World, and Jungle Cruise, actually were.  Unfortunately, my memory of Pirates of the Caribbean (or "Cabberian," if you're Jonah) had censored the steep drop and terrifying pirate scenes, so it ended up being a rather poor choice of ride on which to drag them, but oh well.  If anything, it cemented our belief that we avoided disaster by skipping Goofy's Actual Kitchen, since they both spent the ride cringing in terror and covering their eyes.

Unsurprisingly, then, by 2 pm they were done with Dismey.  We may be the first people in the history of Dismeyland who left the park right after lunch so that we could go back to our room and relax with a little on-line math.  After a quick EPGY session on the laptop, the guys spent the rest of the afternoon at the pool, which was a lot more their speed.  Dismeyland: It's Not For Everyone.

Then, of course, it was time for 16 rounds of We Just Want to Eat at Rainforest Cafe Again!  Why Can't We Eat at Rainforest Cafe Again?!  Unwilling to face another night of man-made thunder and oversized salads, we insisted on setting in foot in California Adventure, where we schlepped all over the park before settling on a regular old burger joint right near the entrance.  After which Nate and I headed back to the hotel, and Steve and Jonah hit Soarin' Over California, Monsters Inc., and the bumper bugs.  And that was that.  Despite our best efforts to, per his instructions/demands, wake him for the fireworks on night two, Nate refused to so much as crack an eyelid.  He then spent the rest of the trip complaining that I had forced him to go on a scary ride and failed to show him any fireworks.

We hardly even got any pictures, and none in which you can see Dismey.

 
 
 
Oh, well.  Here are some cute pictures I never posted of Jonah on Purim and Passover, respectively:

 
 

Can I Get an "Awwwwww?"

Jonah: "How old do I have to be to get married?"

Me: "I think you have to be 18, but you'd want to be older than that."

Jonah: "Why?  I want to get married with Kate when I'm 18!"

Me: "Well, you still have a lot of growing up to do when you're 18.  You'll want to travel the world, figure out what you like, who you are, and that kind of stuff."

Jonah: "But I already know what I like!  I know who I am!"

Me: "Oh yeah?  What do you like?"

Jonah: "Love.  I like love."

*****************

Good times are abounding.  We just came back from a great vacation, during which we showed Robearto, Nate's class's stuffed bear, the most fun he's ever had.  (This was not actually a big accomplishment, considering that, according to other kids' essays that I read, Robearto normally spends his visits going to chess club and the dentist with various kids, but still.)  First we drove to San Diego, about which I can only say that the car charger I bought for our iPhones was the best $24.99 I've ever spent.  We departed at 5:30 in the morning, with the plan being that the H brothers would sleep for the first hour or so, but of course, ha on that.  Thus, the 18 or so hours they spent playing Angry Birds came in handy.  Also: LA traffic, you make me so happy that I left you.

We arrived in San Diego to find our 6 year old friend Tamsin ready to sternly direct an activity she'd been planning.  "Ok," she said by way of greeting, "come in here.  We're having an Easter egg hunt.  Get baskets and start looking for eggs.  You, come over here.  You, go over there.  Now."  Nate, who loves nothing more than rules and order, was in heaven.  Tamsin, who is not used to having her, shall we say directness, so well received, was intrigued.  In other words, the two of them hit it off immediately.  So much so that the next morning, when Nate sat down to begin his daily 6:30 a.m. EPGY session, Tamsin decided to bust out her own laptop and join him in some early morning mathesthenics.

 
Jonah hit it off equally well with Tamsin's 4 year old sister, Emerson.  The two of them became fast friends when they discovered that they both enjoy fighting with swords,

flying in planes,

 
driving cool Lego cars,

 
and posing as baby chicks:

 
Nate, for his part, really dug the build your own Lego racecar and race it exhibit. 

 
He also had fun showing the sights to Robearto:

 

 
 
 
And we, of course, were very happy to reunite with our old friends Sam and Darren, who we used to see all the time but whom we almost never get to see any more.  Of course, no one thought to get a picture of the adults or anything, but maybe next time.  Next installment: Dismeyland!