Treasure Map

Tonight we ate spaghetti on the front porch, played baseball in the backyard, and played with Hotwheels cars in the dirt pit. When we came in, Ben introduced me to a new game on the Lego website, Martian Chase, in which the player is an astronaut trying to outrun an alien and collect crystals while leaping over bricks. Then we worked on our first edition of the family newspaper, which was entirely Ben’s idea. It’s called Lessos’ Weekly, and has articles fully created by Ben about such topics as discovering a secret room and knocking Dad unconscious in a pillow fight- not to mention a bomb thrown from an alien ship. Ben also suggested the photos. The paper looks awesome.

Ben asked for a melted cheese burrito (his favorite) and then a math quiz. (The occasional quizzes, tests, grades, and “classes” are completely his idea.) I gave him ten questions, writing the numbers in columns. I introduced the concept of adding double digits in columns. He did great, and his formation of numbers is coming along nicely.

He asked for a spelling test next, and I spoke ten words aloud for him. He spelled all of these: apple, grumpy, globe, baseball, colorful, silver, string, clothes. He needed to add an extra “o” to balloon, and remove an extra “i” from musical. He writes in all caps except for the letter i, which he does as a line with a circle above it. I told him again that I love his confidence with spelling.

He decided to do art class, which involved him drawing a three-panel cartoon. The first panel showed “an angel throwing a bomb.” The second panel showed “the bomb being thrown at the Devil.” The third panel showed “the Devil exploding in a raging cloud of flame and smoke.”

He did Show and Tell for me with one of his biggest caterpillars, telling the story of two heroes: the caterpillar was a hero by moving to show Ben he was alive, and Ben was a hero because he rescued the caterpillar from a spiderweb.

He composed music on his small electric organ for music class.

He found a large mayfly in the house, and we fed it to one of our betta fish, Moses, who finally managed to swallow the whole thing, prompting us to squeal and high-five each other.

Things we’ve discussed lately include political power, promises, and truth (from news stories and the video “It’s the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown”), how coffee grounds & tea flavor our water without leeching INTO the water, where to plant the baby pine tree we got at church a few weeks ago (especially where NOT to plant it and why), and digital vs. analog: Ben sat at the kitchen table the other day and looked at the CD player from a distance, then picked up a pen and drew the lines which made up the number 5 from the clock. “Wow,” he said. “That’s SO digital.”

We’ve been to birthday parties and church to hang out with friends, hit Chuck E. Cheese to play games with friends, and chatted with neighbors. Ben had a conversation with a cute salesgirl at Target about AC/DC, complimented Jessica at Starbucks on her cool style, and talked with lots of people at Barnes & Noble.

We’ve listened to lots of music (he still loves pop & rock the best) and watched a softball game at the park. He worked on a puzzle with the states, where you must match the capital with each state. He learned how to imitate a dove’s call. He wrote lots of notes and drew lots of pictures, hunted for bugs, set up a habitat for caterpillars, read books to his 3-year-old friend Kayla, helped make pancakes, and built his own complex creations from Legos. We watched animated Lego videos and roller coaster videos on YouTube. We talked about sponsoring a 7-yr-old boy in Guatemala in the near future, and Ben started gathering things to send him. We learned some simple Spanish words. He started writing a report about caterpillars, and we talked about using the Index to look up subjects in a book, as well as using references. We said goodbye to our Very Old Mouse Ella, who died this weekend.

And now my son wants me to go downstairs and clean the African dwarf frog tank so he can pick snails out of the bucket afterwards and drop them back into the water. He is currently exploring his new Mancala game. He is also making up his own game called “X Knock-Out” with his small wooden Tic-Tac-Toe set, which involves standing the board on its side, putting the Xs in a pile, then using the Os to smash down the Xs and the board. (He says “Okay, now give me five”- he wants you to high-five him on your computer screen.) And now he wants me to play Martian Chase again.

If you trip on a brick during Martian Chase, it’s very sad- you fall and your limbs flop down. Even worse, after you trip twice, the alien eats you.

Worst of all, he BURPS afterwards.

Sigh.

Hmm. I’m adventurous with coffee, but the recommendation to mix Double Chocolate Fudge with Peanut Butter Ripple…well, ick.

Yesterday I woke up and worked for three hours cleaning at our church. Dave & I have our own cleaning business, just the two of us, and take turns working so one of us is always with Ben. This arrangement has been magical more times than not!

Dave told me that after I left, Ben got up and curled up with his comforter on the couch in the living room to keep our parakeet, Phoebe, company, and fell asleep again.

It was a high-energy day for me. I got home and asked Ben if he wanted to go out for lunch. We ate at Wendy’s, where I created more stealth moves for stealing his fries and he tried to block me. We walked next door to our favorite little coffeehouse and played a game of pool upstairs. Then Ben stood at the counter, making himself as tall as possible, and asked the girl for a Coors Light beer. “I’m 18,” he said. I mentioned that he was out of luck because the drinking age here is 21. “I’m really 21,” he said. No dice.

We stopped in at the coffee & gift store to get the aforementioned combination of java, and luckily a nice shade-grown blend as well. Then we hit the grocery store, where Ben stopped in the freezer aisle and announced: “Look, Mom! LEGOS!” I thought he was hallucinating due to his passion for the plastic bricks. “No, hon, they’re Eggos,” I said. Upon closer inspection it turns out that the waffle makers have indeed made some Lego Eggos, which come in sections you can break apart and build- theoretically. (The waffle studs are too spongy for that.)

We drove to a lot where a house was just torn down and the excavator, reminding us of a T-Rex, picked up debris and dropped it into a dumpster. I still get a thrill watching them up close, imagining I’m a puny human hiding from the ravenous jaws of the huge beast.

At home again, I made us vanilla ice cream cones, and Ben met our mailwoman, Pam, on the front porch. “Look in the mailbox,” he told her. She was not freaked out by the enormous fake ant- she picked it right up and said, “You know, these aren’t so bad. My son’s afraid to hold the real ones, but they don’t bite.” She handed Ben a new Lego Magazine, and he woo-hooed his way to the couch to settle in with that, a Highlights, and some books while I mowed the lawn (and Dave got home- yay!).

Ben closed himself into the playroom and told us not to come in, that he was working on something very important. So Dave weed-whacked; I washed out the birdbaths and filled the feeders. A bold chickadee flew down to eat and check me out- from a couple of feet away- as I shucked corn into the compost bin. I love chickadees.

Ben showed us what he’d created- the beginning of a book! He’s been confident enough with his writing to work on longer pieces lately, of his own volition. The book is called JIM AND PEARL’S ADVENTURES. He says I can share the first chapter here.

Chapter 1: The Mystery Planet

The story of life on other planets: So far, the two main characters, Jim and Pearl, have been on a plane for three days. Once, Jim saw a star that was black. He said to Pearl, We’d beeter investigate! Now, said Pearl. Yes. said Jim. A black star? O.K. said Pearl But only once. Oh, and my way. O.K. said Jim. So they went and explored the star. Jim saw a crack in the ground Yikes! yelled Pearl. What? yelled Jim. I saw a creature that looked like a mini dinosoar. Except it had claws. Stay tuned for next week’s adventure: Meet the Robots!

Ben told me, “I might have spelled some things a little wrong, but that’s okay.” I absolutely love his confidence.

“Look at my abs,” he also said, squeezing his upper arm. “They’re getting so big I can hardly fit my hand around them.”

We ate on the front porch, then played baseball in the backyard, then volleyball with a punch ball until it popped. I blew up some regular balloons and Ben jumped on them (hands over his ears!) to try and pop them. He played basketball with Dave and dug in his dirt pit. We shredded cotton balls for the birds to use in nests, and scattered them in the bird area. Inside again, he “researched” on the computer (he has his favorite websites bookmarked, including Lego and Barbie) while Dave & I watched The Bachelor (one of my guilty pleasures). And he built amazing creations with his Legos, as usual. He played in the bathtub upstairs while I had computer time, and then we read books in his bed together as we usually do- each with our own book, occasionally commenting, occasionally laughing at farts and telling jokes and having philosophical conversations about life, the concept of God, the earth, people, food, numbers, you name it.

“You’re the best mom in the universe,” he always calls to me after I go to my own bed.

“You’re the best boy in the solar system,” I answer.

“Thanks,” he says.

Right now, he’s sitting on the couch up here, holding a five-pound weight in one hand and reading The Collier Quick & Easy Guide to Magic. On the kitchen table downstairs is the Mother’s Day card he chose for me- a large card with photos of flowers, titled For the Woman I Love. When you open it, the song “Cherish” plays.

Our window blinds are blowing in the breeze and hitting the window frame. “Those could be vines swinging and making a wonderful rustling sound,” Ben says. He wants me to tell you that’s a poem from his best-selling book THE DAY OF DREAMS.

And in the beautiful book that is my life, Ben himself is my favorite poem.

We are Paula, Dave & Ben. Ben is almost 7 years old, and changed his name from Andy to Ben early this year. “I stand up for myself a lot,” he says.

Among Other Things, we consider ourselves unschoolers, and we are members of our local UU congregation.

Ben would like you to know that “once, I stood up for myself by making a flyer for no pesticides. I build Legos a lot. I love the computer. I stay up really late every night- 2:00 a.m. at the latest. I love listening to rock music. I pretty much like girl stuff like barbiegirls.com. I love going outdoors and I’m afraid of bees.”