Mumsaid he is as good as gold
Eeyah, GreenWarrior, The Boy...the Incredible Human I Get to Claim as My Son
Note: Ten years ago, in the chilly wee hours of a February morning, I gave birth to my firstborn, whom we refer to online (usually) as Green Warrior. However, my second child, The Girl, affectionately named him "Eeyah" though I am fairly certain she is capable of correctly pronouncing his first name. She is nearing two, he is ten. I do not "get" the Green Warrior reference completely, so I, for ease of use, hereby declare the title of his persona in the World Wide Web...Eeyah. I think I might type Eea for short. Just thought I'd clarify.
Eea is amazing. Incredible. Unbelievable. And sometimes just damn confusing. His startling intelligence and loving disposition make up for the amount of frustration I feel when doing what I refer to as my "mom job."
I know most parents are supposedly biased and tout their own offspring as the smartest, cutest, sweetest, most talented, best of the bestest humans in the universe, but I am often told that my son is brilliant. He was given the educational diagnosis "autistic" last year, a label which resulted in a resounding "well, duh!" from yours truly. I simply learned to care for and educate this little human to the best of my ability. I move out of the way when he begins bouncing and flapping his arms with excitement. I gently confiscate his Ipod when he becomes hyperfocused on watching videos of British kids playing Minecraft and I politely ignore when, at this very moment, he runs from the living room to the kitchen repeatedly as if he too was involved with the characters. I helped him overcome his fear of automatic flushing toilets after plugging his ears for him while he went about "his business" until he was about eight years old. With a friendly yet growling stare, I dared other women to look at me with scorn as I allowed my obviously potty-trained, walking, self-feeding son to follow me into the ladies' restroom. Go ahead say somethin' you ignorant b!+ch, I thought, in my usual ghetto meets West County language. You see what happens. Though I am still not quite sure what would have happened, it is definitely the image necessary to defend one's young in the somewhat primal world of Motherhood.
Yet as he gets older and school gets harder and peers get more socially aware and responsibilities get more numerous...my ability to assist, encourage, monitor, remind, and teach this savant-like child gets weaker...at least in comparison. At least it feels like it.
Tears well up in my eyes as I type. That's not what I had in mind for this entry, so the rest of the story that involves The Fight to Raise Eeyah will have to rest for now. Just understand that this child is, for lack of a better word, special. In every way imaginable.
I dusted off the url of this blog today because my son, while cooking spaghetti squash and noodles with me, told me about butter. The label on the stick of butter marks each tablespoon, and it was only a day or two ago that my husband explained to him how to measure said ingredient. I usually eyeball the measurement, and am usually correct. Today Eeyah made a stick of butter much, much more than a quarter pound of (delicious) saturated fat necessary for delicious (fatty) cooking. In lieu of video (I asked if he would let me record him explaining butter and he declined. If I could only record every waking moment...that would require a LOT of editing. If I don't have enough time to manage two blogs and the accessories that accompany them, I won't be able to keep up with video editing. (Will have to devise some other plan for exploiting the intelligence of my offspring...)
I will try to explain what I learned from this afternoon's math lesson:
Note: Ten years ago, in the chilly wee hours of a February morning, I gave birth to my firstborn, whom we refer to online (usually) as Green Warrior. However, my second child, The Girl, affectionately named him "Eeyah" though I am fairly certain she is capable of correctly pronouncing his first name. She is nearing two, he is ten. I do not "get" the Green Warrior reference completely, so I, for ease of use, hereby declare the title of his persona in the World Wide Web...Eeyah. I think I might type Eea for short. Just thought I'd clarify.
Eea is amazing. Incredible. Unbelievable. And sometimes just damn confusing. His startling intelligence and loving disposition make up for the amount of frustration I feel when doing what I refer to as my "mom job."
I know most parents are supposedly biased and tout their own offspring as the smartest, cutest, sweetest, most talented, best of the bestest humans in the universe, but I am often told that my son is brilliant. He was given the educational diagnosis "autistic" last year, a label which resulted in a resounding "well, duh!" from yours truly. I simply learned to care for and educate this little human to the best of my ability. I move out of the way when he begins bouncing and flapping his arms with excitement. I gently confiscate his Ipod when he becomes hyperfocused on watching videos of British kids playing Minecraft and I politely ignore when, at this very moment, he runs from the living room to the kitchen repeatedly as if he too was involved with the characters. I helped him overcome his fear of automatic flushing toilets after plugging his ears for him while he went about "his business" until he was about eight years old. With a friendly yet growling stare, I dared other women to look at me with scorn as I allowed my obviously potty-trained, walking, self-feeding son to follow me into the ladies' restroom. Go ahead say somethin' you ignorant b!+ch, I thought, in my usual ghetto meets West County language. You see what happens. Though I am still not quite sure what would have happened, it is definitely the image necessary to defend one's young in the somewhat primal world of Motherhood.
Yet as he gets older and school gets harder and peers get more socially aware and responsibilities get more numerous...my ability to assist, encourage, monitor, remind, and teach this savant-like child gets weaker...at least in comparison. At least it feels like it.
Tears well up in my eyes as I type. That's not what I had in mind for this entry, so the rest of the story that involves The Fight to Raise Eeyah will have to rest for now. Just understand that this child is, for lack of a better word, special. In every way imaginable.
I dusted off the url of this blog today because my son, while cooking spaghetti squash and noodles with me, told me about butter. The label on the stick of butter marks each tablespoon, and it was only a day or two ago that my husband explained to him how to measure said ingredient. I usually eyeball the measurement, and am usually correct. Today Eeyah made a stick of butter much, much more than a quarter pound of (delicious) saturated fat necessary for delicious (fatty) cooking. In lieu of video (I asked if he would let me record him explaining butter and he declined. If I could only record every waking moment...that would require a LOT of editing. If I don't have enough time to manage two blogs and the accessories that accompany them, I won't be able to keep up with video editing. (Will have to devise some other plan for exploiting the intelligence of my offspring...)
I will try to explain what I learned from this afternoon's math lesson:
- Two tablespoons of butter is a cube, meaning that a stick of butter is exactly two tablespoons tall, and two tablespoons wide. (The height being the shorter measurement, dear readers. The length is the part where we measure tablespoons. Well...some of us measure that way.)
- Two tablespoons tall = 1.25 inches (He went and found a ruler.)
- 1.25 inches = 3 cm (Umm...how many 10 year old boys immediately think of using centimeters because their measurement wasn't in "exact inches?")
- Two tablespoons of butter = 27 cubic centimeters (Cubic centimeters immediately came to his mind after converting inches to centimeters. Doesn't everyone think like that in fifth grade?)
Got it???
Here's his answer: "27 x 4...7 x 4 is 28...28 + 80 is 108. 108 cubic centimeters."
He didn't write anything down. He was building with Legos, and said, "Look, a tetrahedron!" as he held up his creation. Then he said he "couldn't think" so I grabbed a pencil and began writing what he said, a strategy I often use for homework. That is EXACTLY how he came up with the number of cubic centimeters in a stick of butter. Building something with Legos, standing up, walking around, calling out equations.
That, people, is my son. The Boy. GreenWarrior. Eeyah. And he's incredible.
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