A nice greetings to you people from Lydia and Eden and Mom and Dad and Me, meaning Christopher.

I was working on a nice little post about how quiet and peaceful our home was: rain softly falling, husband sleeping, son away at grandma’s, older daughter reading in the built in bed behind me, younger daughter playing quietly at my feet. This small room we normally use as an office and dump site, was clean and cozy, as was all the house. We were lovely.

Then the baby tore off her diaper and ran off, grabbed a used swim diaper (just damp from the pool) sadly I don’t know where she was able to find it. Let’s say the trash. The next half hour was spent listening to her demands, helping her turn them into polite requests, then catering to them.

Got her situated and back in a diaper then came back to revel in the opportunity to write about peace and quiet. Then something happened to the dental floss that connects me to DSL and I lost the post.

Just know it happened. For a good 20 minutes this house was peaceful and quiet, a stinking idyll. It did not sound like an insane asylum. Sometimes my sister, who lived with us for a time and ought to know better will ask, “Do you have someone over?” I never do, it is just three children, three extremely loud children. How they came to be I do not know. It must be Paul’s influence.

Part of the blame is having a deaf child who is taught to speak. C. Riley is profoundly deaf, but at the age of three (after much prayer, fasting and listening) he received the cochlear implant. This enables him to hear, in one ear, just under normal. It is a medical marvel and for this little guy that it worked was a miracle. I will tell you more about that later. Just know that he can hear, but imperfectly and with an accent. Because he is a voracious reader and a bright kid he sounds a bit like a smart foreigner – sophisticated vocabulary, sometimes formal sentence structure, sometimes kooky and a cute little accent.

His passion is science. Last year was his first full year in regular ed. He struggled. He hated school. This was so frustrating because he loves to learn. Every day he hauled huge books in his backpack to read on the way to school and at every break. His teacher got a tic having to tell him to stop reading. It killed her. Doing math homework every night with him for hours just about killed me. He couldn’t wait for the day he could quit school and get a job. He planned to do this when he was ten. I tried to think of anything to inspire him. It occurred to me I could take him to a laboratory and ask a scientist to tell him what you must study in order to be a scientist. Basically I wanted the scientist to be my mouth piece, “Yes son, you need to study math, and work hard, eat your vegetables and go to bed by 8:30…” You get the picture. I started hunting scientists.

Driving in the car one day I decided to wet his appetite. This over the shoulder conversation ensued:

“Hey C!”

“Yes Mom?”

“Would you like to go to a laboratory and meet a scientist some day?”

“Yes! I would like to go to Stan’s labatory…”

Stan? I wondered if it was some cartoon character. There was Dexter, Jimmy Neutron…Stan? I couldn’t think of a Stan. C. was continuing,

“Instan is a very great scientist…”

In Stan! Instan! My auditory memory finally solved the puzzle.

“Do you mean Einstein?”

“Oh yes, Einstein. He is the greatest scientist in the world. I want to visit his labatory.

“LaBRAtory”

“Oh laboratory.”

“Uh Buddy, Einstein is dead.”

He instantly burst into tears. “When?” he managed to sob.

“A long time ago. Before you were born. I’m sorry.”

“I need to tell Lydia.” (his sister)

The sobbing continued until home and off and on throughout the day. He cried himself to sleep three nights in a row.

One night I tried to comfort him but he was inconsolable. “Einstein was the greatest scientist in the world. I wanted him to teach me.”

“Honey, he still can. He had many students who learned from him and then they taught others. You can study and become a great scientist so that little boys and girls will want to study and learn what you discover. Maybe they will talk about “H—–n” some day.

This consoled him slightly. He continued to grieve off and on, when the sorrow struck him anew.

Later that year when required to do research he chose Einstein as his subject. On one of his worksheets he perfectly copied the Theory of Relativity.

“What does e=mc2 mean? The most famous equalation in physics says that the energy (E) in an object is equal to it’s mass (M) multiplied by the speed of light (C), then mutipled by light again.”

I read it to Paul in amazement. “Well he copied it,” was his response.

!!!

He now has several Einstein posters in his room. My favorite has this quote at the bottom, “Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics. Mine are still greater I can assure you.”

My husband is a man of many newly discovered talents. My first blog recorded his fantastic achievements putting in floors that made the professionals quail. Last week he deftly replaced the tubing on our pool slide. The last few days he has been busy dominating the comment section in one of my posts. All this is new behavior but nothing prepared me for his latest activity.

The other day he was sort of lurking on the edge of the deep end doing something strange, I can’t remember what exactly. It attracted my attention.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Water aerobics,” was his quick response. And then in a flash we both remembered that his mom at one point was quite the afficianado of water aerobics.

“Your mom teach ya that?” I asked and then we both started laughing picturing him, a 6’6 man, being tutored by his mother in, of all things, water aerobics.

Yesterday he was in the middle of the shallow end, one arm down, his entire body stretched out perpandicularly and slowly circling. “This is what I call my Pinwheel,” he said before I could ask.

How can you not worship such an amazingly talented man?

I must.

I have a two and a half year old little girl. She is in that mystical stage between baby and big girl. From time to time I would ask her, “Are you a baby or a big girl?” “Baby!” she would shout. Beginning of June I knew my days of having a baby were numbered so I questioned her daily. Every day she would answer confidently, “Baby!”

June 22, the second anniversary of my dad’s death she answered, “Big Guh” for the first time which gave me a pang. The next day she quickly reverted to “Baby”.

July 8, my 35th birthday she pulled “Big Guh” out of her hat again and then again reverted to “Baby” the next day.

I just got up from the computer and shouted outside, “Beanie, are you a baby or a big girl?”

At 4 pm on Sunday, July 17 she was a baby. In a few minutes she might be a big girl again.

That is fine with me.

Years and years ago a friend of ours said as we were walking into a theater, “Enter on the side which is opposite your instincts.” He assured us there would be more open seats. For years and years I have been going in opposite the flow, against my instinct so that now my instinct is to go opposite and I can’t tell which is which.

It isn’t a big deal, but sometimes I have a little mental spasm entering a theater alone.

Fortunately I don’t get out a lot.