Craig's Blog: Charlie! (at 9 years old)

Charlie Month 116: The Weed Made Me Do It

We went to Santa Cruz for Fall Break, and walking to the beach we detected an unmistakeable odor. "What is that?" Milo asked. "It's pot," I said. "Ah," said Charlie wistfully. "It reminds me of New York." I personally would be happy if they somehow totally eliminiated public marijuana use in NYC -- I never thought I would pine for the days of cigarette smoke -- but I'm glad Charlie has happy associations with it.

Charlie came out of Fall Break with renewed energy for school. He even sometimes does his homework without us needing to nag him! Homework has a lot of reading and writing so it's not the easiest for him. Historically more difficult plus more time-consuming has equalled "Charlie does a lot of avoidance", but the equation is changing. Charlie also sometimes stops watching videos before we tell him his time is up. It's like he's turning into a responsible person. (More evidence: while he still throws all his dirty clothes on the floor, he at least keeps them in a neat pile.)

Charlie also has renewed energy for art. He is developing his own style, which involves a bunch of oval-headed people in a large crowd scene. The people are all named "Bob." Burgers figure prominently.

Charlie Month 115: The Names Are Educational, At Least

Longtime readers of this blog will know of Charlie's love of Geometry Dash, whose entire relationship to geometry lies in the fact that the main character icon is a square. It did not take us long to learn this wsa not an educational game. Thus, when Charlie told us that he has a new favorite website, called Cool Math Games, we had our guard up. And sure enough, it turns out it has nothing to do with math -- as far as we can tell -- and is instead a collection of '90s era flash games. Honestly, Mary and I were kinda pumped he's into the retro.

This isn't to say that Charlie doesn't care about cool math. He told us about the Quadratilator, which is an umbrella term for any cool technique for solving a math problem. He only knows one quadratilator so far: the "nines trick". But I'm sure he'll learn more as he goes through life. I just don't expect he'll be learning them from coolmathgames.com.

Charlie Month 114: He Likes Not-Me, He Likes Not-Me Not

Charlie has so many friends these days he's worrying about them liking each other. Last summer he went to a camp with one of his friends. Then it turned out another of his friends was joining the camp too, but a few weeks late. The day before his arrival, Charlie was very worried: what if they didn't like each other? Or, what if they liked each other too much, and left him behind? Charlie wasn't sure which fate was worse. In the end, they got along OK but not great, which was just fine by Charlie.

Yesterday was similar. Charlie went to Great America with L――, who also loves roller coasters. (Side note: you know you're an old fogey when you're like, "Ugh, do I have to go to the amusement park?" Luckily it was Yom Kippur -- "Luckily it was Yom Kippur" being a phrase I never expected to use in my entire life -- so this time the answer was "no.") He discovered his bestie E―― would also be there. Uh oh, very worried, etc. etc. In the end, they only saw E―― once, in passing. And Charlie still enjoyed the roller coasters. He went on his favorite 9 times: his own Day of Holiness.

Last month I mentioned how Charlie was playing D&D with Uncle Frankie. Today I learned he's playing it at school as well. I found this out when I was looking through his homework folder and found, in between a math problem and a short essay ("What was your favorite part of the book? What did you feel when you were reading it?" Response: "When they found the treasure. I didn't feel anything."), a D&D character sheet. "Do you need this?" I asked him. "It's the only thing I need," he said. "You can throw the rest of it out." I looked and his character's Charisma score was off the charts. No wonder he wanted to keep it.

Charlie Month 113: D&D With Walter White

Mary asked Charlie what his favorite part of school was, and it took himi a while to answer. Eventually he said, "Dismissal, because then I get to go home." In reality, he seems to be really enjoying school, his teacher said he smiles all the time and participates in class. His bestie E―― is in his class this year, and they get to hang out a lot, especially at recess. (His second favorite part of school.) When we were giving input at the end of last year, we had some things to say about what teacher we thought would be best for Charlie this year, but a lot to say about what classmate we thought would be best. We're gratified to see that paying off.

His favorite part of school has definitely not been math class, because they split into groups, and about half the kids ("the smart kids," per Charlie) were in one group, half the kids ("the normal kids") in another, and then Charlie, who was in a group with only 2 other kids. It didn't take him long to figure out what level that group was at. "This math is too easy for me," Charlie told his teacher. "I could do this in first grade." So they took another look and reassigned him to the middle math group! We were very proud of Charlie for advocating for himself. (And happy with the school for listening to him.) It was definitely a dent to Charlie's self-esteem, but given that it was remedied so quickly, we're hopeful it's not a long-term one.

In contrast, Charlie's not-school has a whole lot of favorite parts. One has been playing Dungeons and Dragons with Uncle Frankie. Yesterday there was an epic 3-hour video call. I thought that maybe they weren't spending the whole time on D&D, because I would hear Charlie talking about Walter White and Steve Harvey. But it turns out that is what he chose to name his D&D characters. (How he even knows who those people are, I have no idea.) Sometimes they would attack their enemies in typical -- for D&D -- medieval fashion, but they would also make use of other, more modern attack styles, such as "sick burns".

Charlie Month 112: Reading Assistant

Charlie had a tough time with summer reading instruction last year. This year Charlie has been more into it ... at least, for Cora's reading lessons. He's been very excited to be the Reading Teacher Assistant, helping verify that Cora has said the right words, putting stars up on the whiteboard when Cora gets a word right, and so forth. He actively volunteered for this role multiple times over the summer! Charlie is very much able to read these days, but doesn't always have the confidence. I think this has been a great opportunity for him to build that confidence. (We're still working on how he doesn't need to tear down Cora's confidence as part of that process!)

When he's not helping with Cora's reading instruction, Charlie is spending most of his time thinking about roller coasters. The rides at the Dane County Fair were well and good, but they just whet his appetite. He went to Great America last week and finally went on the roller coaster he's been most scared of, called RailBlazer. ("Aren't you proud of me, dad?") Now he spends his screen time watching point-of-view videos of roller coasters around the world, and is already pushing us to take a family trip to Sandusky, Ohio so he can go to the Cedar Point amusement park. He will go on at length about what roller coasters exist at Cedar Point and which ones are worth going on and what order he would go on them if given the opportunity *hint hint*.

He won't have much time left for Great America because school is almost ready to start again! We went through the annual ritual of going through all his school projects from last year and deciding what he would keep in the upstairs art museum, what would go into the garage art museum (a cardboard box), and what would go into the trash. Charlie added his own, fourth category: things so special he wanted to keep them in his room. That category was a lot more popular than the "trash" category.

Charlie Month 111: The Declaration of Independence

Charlie wanting to use a knife all by himself isn't the only effort towards independence that Charlie has been making recently. He's been asking to stay home alone as well. ("Stay away from the knives," we said.) He cuts up his own chicken rather than asking one of us to do it, and will even microwave it himself now. Just yesterday he asked me how to do laundry. He didn't actually do it, but he did ask me how...

He's even looking for more independence in reading. Milo learned how to read by playing Zelda, and now it's Charlie's turn. He's been really into the video game Return to Monkey Island, and there's quite a bit of reading in it. Charlie has been figuring out most of the text himself. But when it's too long, he's still turning to Mary for help. We're ok with him not being totally independent just quite yet.

Charlie Month 110: Pizza Pilgrimage

Charlie's favorite pizza place near us is called Slice of New York. "It does do a creditable New York slice," I said, "but actual New York slices are still better." Charlie got the idea to put that to the test. And so it was the Pizza Pilgrimage was born: 1 city, 4 days, 13 different pizza places. "Won't you get sick of pizza?" I asked him. "We can have burgers sometimes too," he said. (The friends we were staying with did their best to detoxify us with healthful, colorful breakfasts.)

Charlie and I went together, as his dad-and-me activity for the summer. We did more than just eat pizza, of course: we visited an observation deck, went rock-climbing in central park, stopped by the zoo, and respected some history. We bused around Brooklyn, subwayed everywhere else, trammed to Roosevelt Island, boated past the Statue of Liberty, and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. (We did sooo much walking this trip, and Charlie never complained a bit.) Charlie's favorite part of the latter was all the stickers on the posts. We even saw a play, full of slapstick and just Charlie's speed. I snuck in a few visits with friends and family. We spent a whole day at the Natural History Museum -- the pizza there got the lowest rating of the trip -- where I discovered Charlie loves anthropology. Dinosaurs? Sure, whatever. Giant squid? That was so four years ago. Artifacts from African and Central American civilizations? Now we're talking.

There was even some downtime: a little bit for board games, and a lot for Geometry Dash.

Charlie was really into superlatives: he kept asking what was the tallest building in New York ("The Freedom Tower has an antenna, I think that's cheating"), the rarest gemstone in the natural history museum, the oldest primate. But my favorite superlative is that this was the best trip ever: a 9.9 out of 10. Only Joe's Pizza did better than that.

P.S. For the curious, the 13 pizzas were from: Table 87 (8 out of 10, but likely would have scored higher if we had had it fresh), Scarr's (4/10), Juliana's (4/10), My Pie (4/10), Lucia's (5/10), the American Museum of Natural History cafeteria (0/10), Best Pizza (8/10), Leo (9/10), L'Industrie (9/10), Fini (5/10), Joe's (10/10), J's (2/10, suffered from being takeout), and Emily (8/10). I know, I know, a lot of great pizza places didn't make the cut. Charlie is already talking about next time!

Charlie Month 109: Charlie's Restaurant (In the Making)

Charlie's reading has come a long way in the past year, and so has his writing. He put his skills to good use to construct the menu he wants to have when he founds his own restaurant one day. He has strong feelings about what kinds of food restaurants should serve, and is miffed when they waste precious menu space on things like vegetables. He suspects there are people who prefer those kinds of restaurants, but that doesn't make it ok. "More and more people I meet don't like pizza or ice cream," he told me. "It's terrifying."

So far, for Charlie's Restaurant, he has populated the kids' menu. (Under the theory, not so inaccurate in our household, that grown-ups really just go to restaurants to keep their kids company.) What a coincidence, it has all his favorite foods.

Even his idioms are food-related. He got in the car after school one day and wanted to tell me about the school day, and why he was so irritated. "I'm feeling salty about something," he said. I'm feeling salty about something too: his kids menu doesn't have mac and cheese on it! It's terrifying.

Charlie Month 108: Good-Bye, Eight-Year-Old Charlie

Friday night, Charlie said to me, "It's time to say good-bye. This is the last time I'm going to see you." "What do you mean?" I said. "I'm eight-year-old Charlie. Tomorrow morning you're going to meet nine-year-old Charlie." "I'll miss you," I said, and gave him a big hug. "You'll always be eight-year-old Charlie to me." "Tell mom good-bye for me," he said.

It turns out nine-year-old Charlie is much like eight-year-old Charlie in what he wants for birthday presents. It consists mostly of out-of-print lego sets. He also celebrated a year of Geometry Dash obsession with a Geometry Dash plush. It is very geometrical. While not on his birthday proper, we also visited his favorite pizza place and he was inspired to put an enconium to it up on the wall. It involves a slice of pizza giving a thumbs-up sign which is more artistry than I can muster.

Charlie is starting to be more of a leader at school. With a friend, he founded a lunch club devoted to identity, including gender identity. The first day, it was only him and his friend there, so they spent the hour making signs. Now 4 of 5 people come regularly, and have told him how nice it is to have a space for this. By contrast, the Dungeons and Dragons lunch club that he goes to, on a different day, has only 2 people in it, of which he is one. (The other is the middle-schooler who runs it.) He has a lot of control over the D&D adventures.

It has been such fun to see Charlie grow over the last year. He has come through all the Girl Drama at school with a surer sense of who his friends are. He's no longer at a loss of what to say when thanking his teachers. And, most importantly, while I thought it would never happen, he has actually tried beef wellington. A rite of passage for any self-respecting 8-year-old. We're glad to have you in our family, 9-year-old Charlie!