Perspectives and Critiques

Lovely Locks

I got an early start Monday morning, waking up at 5:00 a.m. to watch Queen Elizabeth's funeral.  Despite Josiah's love for British bands, British accents, and British TV shows, he slept through the whole thing as did his siblings.  Later on, however, Josiah remarked that his hair was growing nicely and should be ready by Halloween.  His plan is to dress in his suit and go as a shaggy-haired Paul McCartney.    

We rang in the autumnal equinox with sunny 99° weather.  And, despite the temperatures, Josiah fought off a fall cold for most of the week.  Lots of sneezing!  Henry gave it to Josiah, Josiah gave it to Todd, and the ladies are trying to avoid the men.  Fall weather doesn't kick in until mid-December around here.    

Mid-week, the kids decided that they would judge my cooking (in)abilities.  At dinner, they spoke in posh accents pretending to be Food Network style judges and discussed their plates.  There is no greater joy than getting critiqued by three whose primary goal in finishing a meal is to get dessert.  At least they liked that meal.  

At CC this week, Henry and Caroline did perspective drawings in their fine arts section. Every year the kids have a perspective week and every year they have drawn one-point perspective pictures.  Typically, it was a road disappearing into the horizon with a tiny house or mountains in the distance.  This year, Henry and Caroline's classes both did two-point perspective.  (The project is completely up to their tutors, so it was a surprise to see they had done something similar.)   Their results were pretty impressive.  Two-point perspective uses the ruler a lot!  Caroline drew the building, which she named "Party Bombs," while Henry drew the barn.  (Henry didn't mean to crinkle his up in his backpack....)

In Essentials, Caroline's class started diagramming.  When her tutor saw she had done it correctly on her paper, she was volunteered to write it on the board as well.  Caroline is usually always eager to volunteer and writing on the white board is an even bigger treat.  Better than that, it was a sentence about the Bubonic plague.  

Meanwhile, Josiah read his paper on the astronomer, Kepler, in his class.  Josiah has a bit of an aversion to writing formal, boring papers.  Even though I probably discourage it too much, he likes to add humor into everything he writes.  He would rather write, Kepler, while studying the stars, ate some juicy bratwurst than anything monotonous.  Josiah completed his paper with this:  In conclusion, I believe Kepler's laws made planetary motion easier to understand for those of us who do not know what planetary motion is.  Since he has to read his science paper each week, his goal is almost always entertainment.  Always a performer that one.

Josiah has also experienced a resurgence of his Spiderman costume.  This was likely it's last resurgence as it has gotten a little more form fitting.  Still, Josiah happily walked to get the mail, waving at all who passed.  He said it was his way of spreading joy and bringing a smile to people's faces.  

Out of the blue one day, Caroline said we should have named Benson, "Old TV."  I asked her if it was because he was black and white.  Yes.  I think we missed an opportunity there.  We probably would have had the only dog named Old TV if she thought of that a year and a half ago.  This weekend she made him a Paws Hotel.  He wouldn't go into it at all.  He just stood beside it, looking out the front window.  Then, after she went to bed this evening, Benson laid down inside.