First, the thing this blog post is about. The field trip to the coast yesterday involved a lot of hours on a bus. When I got in last night one of the mothers had sent a picture of my son's face, as drawn by her son. It was fairly straightforward and had I not known it was my son by the title, it would have been hard to tell because drawing at that age isn't that detailed typically. Today, I opened up my son's notebook and found some pictures.
I have no idea what they're about but I sure as heck am curious. One scene is possibly in a club with a DJ spinning tunes on the right while a muscular, tank-topped guy is surrounded by women who want to dance with him, thoughts of love shown by the hearts above their heads. Surely this is not what my son was drawing? There is a picture that seems to be some boy/girl attraction with two kissing while another boy vomits in disgust. Then there is the drawing of a man with a pencil-thin mustache and stubble looking at a girl blowing him a kiss. Who is the man with the facial hair? And then there is the depiction of a girl receiving a gift and then saying 'yes' beside more kissing people. What does all this mean? And do I want to know? My son has never said anything remotely indicating he has any idea about any of this. He's eight. Well, he's almost nine. I suppose I'll find out soon enough...
But on to more innocent things... Remember when I mentioned my daughter was approached by a fifth-grader on the playground who wanted to know if she had a Perkins Brailler and if so, did she know she could make pictures with it? Well, I emailed his parents telling them the story from the playground earlier in the day. I said we'd love to have their son, Theo, over any time if he'd like to do some of those pictures on my daughter's brailler.
I got an almost immediate response from his mother, saying what a wonderful idea, and that yes, Theo would love to come over. She told me her son was into ciphers and codes and he had a book of them he'd love to show my daughter. Also, he would like to bring his acoustic guitar to teach her some chords if she would be interested.
Today we got Theo and my daughter together, but beforehand I wanted to make sure we were ready. I first printed up a collection of braille picture instructions and two pages on the braille symbols. Then, my daughter typed up a cover sheet in braille for Theo, but we didn't write the print words above the braille because we wanted to let Theo translate the braille later when he got home. We used our little binder machine to make it all into a booklet and then we were ready for Theo's arrival.
My daughter and Theo didn't know each other, save for that two-minute conversation on the playground. As a parent, you always hope things go well, but you never really know beforehand. Theo pulled out his guitar first thing, showing it to my daughter who wanted to sit down and touch it. He asked his father if they had tuned it recently. His father said he thought it was in tune but my daughter, now strumming it said, "no, it's not." I said I wasn't sure how she would know but Theo did, he said he did, that she had perfect pitch. At that point, my son called for Theo to come upstairs to show him their drum set. My daughter wanted to go too and grabbed Theo's hand, telling him she loved him. I need to tell her not to move so quickly with the boys, but I suppose she's still young for that lesson.
Theo's father, Drew, and I followed them upstairs a few minutes later after my son had come downstairs and departed with Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Margaret's for some hardcore gaming. When Drew and I got upstairs my daughter had already shown Theo the alphabet in braille and how to load paper into her braillewriter. Drew and I sat back and talked about braille (he wasn't familiar with it). I demonstrated how you typed on on my daughter's other braillewriter while she and Theo worked on the other one she has on loan from school.
Theo was very excited about the book of braille pictures we'd made for him and he said he was definitely up for translating the cover sheet. My daughter wanted to show him the next present she had for him. Imagine a cryptex like the one from The Davinci Code. Only imagine it in orange plastic and with braille letters on it. My daughter had won one a while back at a VI event and decided to give it to Theo since she'd heard he loved codes so much. He kept that in his pocket or with him the remainder of the afternoon and clicked it around from time to time between reading out the lines of the braille pictures to my daughter.
They had to work together to make the pictures. He could read the printed pages but didn't know braille. She knew braille but had no idea what to type. They got pretty good at it and even though the picture they selected was large and complicated, once Theo understood about repositioning and erasing (with your fingernail) he and my daughter worked together until they had it finished.
After they'd finished their shamrock picture, my daughter wanted to inflate balloons. We all headed into the craft room and I pulled out the balloon container and the hand inflaters. We blew up balloons and let the air escape from them, wondering how different shaped balloons would sound as they deflated and flew across the room. Then we tied some off and made a crazy balloon sculpture from different sizes and lengths. I have a varied collection of balloon shapes, including the long, thin ones used to make balloon animals so we had a creative sculpture when Theo was done putting everything together.
And then, sadly, it was time for Theo to go home. We had a hard time ending the day because everyone, including the adults, were having such a splendid time. Hopefully, Theo will be able to come back soon to visit.
What My Son Said Today: My son is at Uncle Jonathan and Aunt Margaret's house now. He went over there this afternoon. My son and Uncle Jonathan are playing Fortnite, a game in which you try to outlive everyone else by killing them with various guns and weapons you find as you run around the game map. Margaret messaged me saying, "Fortnite marathon in process. I’m sitting in bed, reading, snuggling up with two sleeping kitties, sipping a cup of tea, minding my own business, when I hear Greyson exclaim, 'Say hello to my little friend!' I literally spit tea across the room and laughed so hard that the cats ran under the bed." He apparently said it in a little eight-year-old Al Pachino voice too. She texted back a little later saying she'd heard my son exclaim mid-game, "Is it just me or am I really good?" He and Uncle Jonathan have been doing quite well because we got another message, this time from Uncle Jonathan, saying the two of them had just gotten a "Victory Royale" together, meaning their duo team was the last to survive out of 100 players.
What My Daughter Did Today: Not ten minutes before Theo arrived this afternoon my daughter decided it would be a good idea to go biking in the rain and wait for him. She was doing circles in the driveway and ran headlong into the basketball post. She came in crying in that, "I've injured myself and I'm scared" kind of way. She had cut open the bottom of her chin with about a centimeter-long cut. There wasn't much to be done save for a long wait at urgent care for one or two stitches at most, and she had been so excited to see Theo. I cleaned the wound, put some strong lidocaine on it to make it stop hurting so I could add antibiotic cream and then butterfly it closed tightly. She was a good sport about things, particularly after I told her we were going to put a Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine bandaid over the butterfly strip. Fun bandaids always make things feel better.
No comments:
Post a Comment