W is for 'What the?'

Our youngest offspring, Anarchy, is four.  He's more like me than I'm strictly comfortable with.  He's not a highly physical child (he holds his hands high when he runs, so he looks like a human washing machine, and none of his limbs seem to be facing the right direction), although he does love kicking balls, reading books and riding his scooter.  He's verbose, and he's a drama llama.

Now, he's only little.  He can't tie his shoelaces, he can't cook, he can't even clean his room without supervision.

So, 'W is for Whale" should be right up his alley:

Right?  No.  Boo-ooring!

Anarchy has an iPad.  Well, it's my old one.

The child uses it far more effectively than I ever will.  Now, I have heard all the arguments against too much gaming, too much TV, not enough running around outside.  For the record, he is a mean machine on the trampoline.

But, I swear, he learned the concept of 'first, second, third" from MarioKart on the Wii.  His reflexes are sharp as little tacks.  He understands some laws of physics, especially if they are accurately depicted in the game.

He could read his name not long after he turned three.  He could spell it shortly after, clicking the little letters in games to put himself in the hall of fame.  In recent months, he's been inclined to pick up a pen and write it.

And write and write and write.  Names, labels, random nouns.

Recently, he was playing a cute little game called Scribblenauts Remix on his device.  It involves you helping a little character by typing in nouns, and that thing will appear for your little man to use.  It's like choose your own adventure with stuff.

Anarchy's little man was in a bind, couldn't move, was stuck between two buildings and to add insult to injury, the boy had conjured up an eel that had eaten all of his goldfish. Time to get out of there.

He asked me, "How do you spell jetpack?"

I looked at him.

"It starts with 'juh', right?"

"Um, yes.  What do you think is next?"

With coaching, he got it all except the kicking K.

You should have seen the fist punching when his little man sailed up and out of there.

He's learned something that I have long suspected to be true:  a jetpack fixes everything.

Until next time,

Em.  x