Chocolate Bliss!

I met my chocolate maker guru (http://www.claudiocorallo.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7&Itemid=)!  IT WAS SO COOL!  A lady translated for him and I was just riveted as he answered questions for almost two hours! Glorious!!! Thrilling!!!  Exciting!!!  Hip, hip, hooray!!! 

With his translator teaching us about the life of the chocolate bean in the germ and how other chocolates are dead, "Chocolates like Valharona are like Egyptian mummies: fancy on the outside, inside... a cadaver!"

Me in seventh heaven!!!

And... on to Cameron's cute antics:

• correcting me,  "I'm not cute! I'm sweet and lovely!" (I should stick around after waking him up more often :) )

• informing me "You need a hug." Hugging me.  Then nuzzling my arm with a crooning, "My lovely motherly sweety poo." (No repression of affection in this kiddo!)

• We were discussing the take away points from dealing with a friend's younger sibling who has a really quick temper.  My kiddo waxed eloquent on what to do when someone has a short fuse and then informed me, "Mom, it's practically impossible to blow your fuse!" (Ah, a compliment!  But, oh how I've been tried! :) )

• "My feet are as clean as iron!" (I naturally asked what that meant and I got the isn't-that-obvious look.  He told me it means they're very clean.)

• after requesting some rough housing where he really loves to be squashed, he got all serious and dignified, "Please don't smother me; it's very unpleasant."

• writing himself a note to help with procrastination, "Past Cameron: No matter what you think it's best to edit your writing right after water and bathroom."

• choosing to color a geography map while naked, hiding in front of Andrew's car in the garage, in a dirty corner, near where we'd seen a scorpion.  (?!?!?!?  I brought him pajamas so he could do the map inside, but he didn't have an explanation for why he chose to hide in the garage instead of clothing himself… he had his room and pajamas available.)

• after one of his exuberant hugs and energetic nuzzles that was lasting awhile, I mentioned that we really should get a dog and he informed me, "You're better than any dog would be."

• trying to print 135 copies of his latest story so he'd have back up  

• randomly commenting at 9:15pm as he looked down,"Hooray, I'm wearing my pants correctly. [Pause]  Hooray, I'm wearing my shirt correctly too."

• mishearing my "wait a second" when he wanted my attention and forlornly repeating, "On August second?"

• sending his grandma "hugs as big as rockets" when she was sad about losing an old tree to lightening

• Cameron's flow of  who's next in history… he paused in listening to the ancient history class to make it clear how world history works.  He rattled off:

"So, what happened is, Egypt starts and then Mesopotamia conquers and becomes next and then Persia conquers Mesopotamia and becomes next and then Greece conquers Persia and becomes next and then the Romans conquer the Greeks and they become next and then the European barbarians conquer the Romans and they're next and then the European barbarians become Renaissance-men, civilized Europeans, and then they're next, and then the Europeans discovered America and then Americans rebelled and then America became the world's super power and that's where we're at now."

• convincing me to do our walk along the road barefoot

• making himself scrambled eggs and then declaring, "The next step in the process is enjoy."

• when I'd mentioned something about a grown up loosing their temper, "Losing their temper? That's very unadult. [I mentioned some do.] Not yoooooou! Not, Dad.  I'm not used to adults who do that. When you become a teacher your fuse gets extended by a meter! On second though, you really need to train more than anything else to be that, but you're not automatically that.  If you lose your temper in front of a kid because the kid did something bad, the kids wont be able to learn.



• "I first knew you five years ago!" (Since he's nine, I asked what happened then. "When I was four I got the memorization effect." He explained that meant he started remembering.)

• When asked who he'd rather have as an evening play buddy, "I always get you as a play buddy, so of coooooourse I want Grandma!"

• getting the words "forgery" and "foundry" mixed up

• responding to me pointing out all the windmills on a hill with, "Oh. They're very numerous."

• fighting a volume war with his dad in the car… Dad wanted to listen to music and Cameron wanted to read to us about tanks.  (It got pretty loud before Cameron noticed the gradual challenge and the giggles took over.)

 • "I just learned that ice cream with ketchup tastes good to me… better than alone!  It's aftertaste is like a burning fire. I like that!!!  No, not a burning fire, a blazing fire!"

• deciding that hefting sticks was what he wanted to do during our stroll… and discarding each one for a more appealing one after a minute or two.

• during syllable work, breaking words up the way he does for spelling; "nation" turned into "nat, ion"… he thus missed the syllable break for the "shun" sound :)

• responding to me helping him with his kitchen chores, "Wow, you must really love me!  Just pooping out somebody makes you automatically love them."

• stating, "I made a new sport with myself.  It's called grind your teeth down.  I click my teeth together, clench so hard, that they chip, making stronger fronts of the teeth and sides." (It sounded like scratching silverware along a plate.  Shudder.  I showed him a little chip in one of my teeth and he decided to never do it again.)

• "sold" his socks to his friends for pretend Minecraft emeralds (This is how boys play cashier.  No pretend cash register to ring up your groceries, a pretend blacksmith forge instead where sweaty socks count as currency and pounding out pretend goods on the cement with an inflated SpiderMan mallet produces wonders.  Cameron has been talking about it all week!)

• after some banter where it was clear that he was not interested in his dad's reminder, his dad asked "Do I need to pop your toes?" and Cameron responded with with a pondered series, "No. Maybe. Probably. Yes."


• It turns out feeding the birds isn't the only thing worthy of doing with one shoe… he hopped around to water the plants too.

• when getting ready to go and looking for socks he yelled, "Let me check my classic hiding place!" (and proceeded to search under all the furniture).

• not wanting to sing the yo ho song because, "It's illegal to be a pirate."

• confusing the words "testicle" and "trachea"

• Pediatrician: The bathroom is on the other side of this wall.
  Cameron: OK, give me a battering ram so that I can get to it.

• making an exception to his snuggling love, "Please don't kiss my eye because it really grosses me out and I think your saliva goes back and gets stuck in my brain."

• coming to the door with hands stuck behind his back in the handle of the watering can, "Great, now I found that you can use watering cans as hand cuffs!"

• after turning off his thinking again during a short melt down, he noticed his own introspective progress and informed me gleefully, "I was noticing I'm angry and I'm stewing."

• spelling usual, "useawool"

• explaining that one of his nicknames for me, "moomykins", was a snuggly version for a cuddly mom :)


• informing me, "I have too many minds for some things."

• counting 85 pixels on his new Minecraft, foam sword

• "Dad, I made your writing legible to me… just letting you know."

• reading along the car dealership signs and coming to "bluck".  (As a family, we were laughing about buying a bluck car and congratulations on your new bluck for at least five minutes. It was an attempt to pronounce "Buick".)

• fixing his OT with one of those looks and saying, "If I didn't know you were a specialist at this, I probably wouldn't believe you."


• naming his new, foam Minecraft sword "La Joyeuse the second" and posing as a serious warrior… I imagine Charlemagne would be a wee bit surprised at the turn of events :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyeuse

• "Why would I be in the army?  I'd get driven crazy by people giving me orders."

• going out in the dark, "I see fake wolves!  My mind supplies coyotes in front of me!"

• responding the to the reminder "bed" with, "Bed Bath and Beyond"

• when he found out his favorite summer chess teacher was joining the team of coaches for his regular club, I asked if he was so excited that he was jumping up and down and he answered, "No! I forgot to!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_Tate

• saying "It's like hitting stones.  What? You don't understand metaphors?" (Classic autism moment of not understanding that everything in his head isn't understood by others. We explained that if you make up a metaphor you could mean any aspect of that action like futile, painful, difficult…  It turned out he was going for inflexible.)

• over the breakfast table, "I am being your oracle.  You need a million hugs."

• after he turned his head so that we accidentally had a lip kiss, he declared, "I accept.  I'll marry you!" (He said I could have two husbands and continued to describe how it would work. He'd be my little husband and then, when a teenager, my medium husband, and when he grows up my second big husband.)

• Story:
I've heard that the near ten age frame is when the adolescent behaviors start and I really, really hope my kid keeps talking through this process so that I can follow his peaks and valleys!  Today, after having a meltdown in the car with tears and trying to blame me for his mistakes and refusing all responsibility of learning from mistakes… I kept my cool and (within twenty minutes) he recognized the issue and moved into another space of how to learn. Then he had an awesome swimming lesson and on the way back to the car he asked...

"Doesn't this look like a renaissance for me? 
Doing really well at Minecraft 
Getting my problem solving better
Writing conversations are more productive and I'm writing better
Listening-turned-off conversations that annoy us are getting quicker faster and faster
Being promoted in my swimming...
Doesn't all that look like a renaissance for me?"

(Holy cats!  He'll turn off his hearing and be like a toddler and then he's like super-introspective, kid genius! I'm buckling up, because boy oh boy does this look like even more intense roller coaster time!)

• Choosing to feed the birds wearing only one shoe.  He was adamant about this and it's is not a gentle spot among the pine needles!

• answering his music teacher's written question with a cheery and contemplative paragraph (not at all a combative tone):

Why is the sound of a language a good place to start for understanding culture more broadly?

I don't think it is a good start because who cares about the language if we can just get along with the songs.  Aren't the tones of the music and the beauty, not the language, important?  Why would the language ever matter?  I think you might think the language is important because the character of the language might reflect the character of the country.  But, take the French for example, their language is nice and sweet, but: they had big time wars with England, had a big French Revolution, and after that Napoleon went around and made mince meat of most of Europe.  So, the French weren't particularly a smoothing, nice people even though their language says so.