unslept family day

J is 7 now, which means I've known him almost five years, and he is growing up. He runs pretty normally now, and he's making that fantastic, gratitude-inducing shift in perspective where he starts to see himself and to empathize more clearly with how others see the world. He's still got his package of Asperger-y stuff, but he's growing up into his unusual self. He looks us in the eyes constantly now, which is striking and awesome. It'd be nice if school could be challenging enough for him to learn anything besides perseverance in the face of tedium, but in general he's got the hang of it as long as his teacher knows how to handle him.

No work today or Monday, so after trying to sleep off my 1:30am-6:30am awakeness, I was around for playing, and J really wanted my company. He's a big fan of making extended Tinkertoy armatures for poking Anna--as with most things J-related, we have no idea why--so he recruited me to help build a Mama-poker that would be longer than her (extremely long) arms without falling apart. I ended up doing the engineering, but he enjoyed watching and doing the testing. We ended up with a quite successful design, about 4 feet long and very stable. Anna was a bit more equivocal.

J knows me so well now that he's largely able to keep up with when I'm being facetious (not coincidentally, a word I learned from my father at an early age).

J: *giggle* Chris, are you making a whatchamacallit too?
C: No. I decided to make a thingamahoozie instead.
J: A thingamahoozie?! What's a thingamahoozie??
C: Oh, you don't know? It's so much better than a whatchamacallit, you won't believe it.
[sounds of Anna busting out laughing in the other room]

Sometimes it's just fun to be contrary.