2016-03-16: Upright Preposterous

Nigel says lots of fun things. This evening, on the way to soccer practice, he upgraded his description of something from "ridiculous" to "upright preposterous".

2016-03-14: Duck Pro Wrestling

Nigel has a collection of small rubber ducks, dressed in various ways, and he has taken, recently, to hosting what seem like professional wrestling tournaments in his bed at night, with the ducks as the wrestlers. This builds on a long-running theme of Nigel acting out battles with his stuffed animals in bed, but the duck wrestling seems to take it to a whole new level, with names, special moves, and strength ratings for each of the ducks, and very elaborate battles between them.

2016-02-10: Wanting to Be Good at Spelling

Mom: What is something you are not good at that you want to be?

Nigel: Spelling

Nigel has struggled with spelling this year. His class is spelling fairly advanced words, and this is one of the first academic tasks that has not come easily to him. Working on his words every night of each week to prepare for the Friday test has been pretty successful, but the amount of repetition and, apparently, negative reinforcement, has ground him down somewhat.

2016-02-09: Multiplication to Powers

Tonight's midnight math discussion of multiple-digit multiplication took a turn and ended up as a discussion of powers.

2016-02-06: Words Have Failed Me

Nigel and Dad have been reading a book called What If?, which answers outlandish physics questions seriously, yet with a good deal of humor. They are currently tackling a new scenario each Saturday morning.

This week's scenario was Hairdryer, in which an indestructible hairdryer is placed into an indestructible box, then fed amounts of energy that increase by a factor of 10 each time. This chapter of the book explains in detail what would happen at each energy level, becoming increasingly ridiculous as it progresses from 1875 watts at the start up into the petawatts.

Nigel and Dad were laughing at the concepts and illustrations*, and at one point somewhere in the terawatts range, Nigel said, "Words have failed me," which needs to go on the list of all-time great Nigel quotes. He mentioned that he, in turn, was quoting Hobbes of Calvin and Hobbes, which he had been re-reading earlier that morning.

*"This loud box is warm. We're friends now!" and "Loud box is making breakfast!" are Nigel and Dad's favorite illustration captions.

2016-02-01: Anniversary Dinner with Fishtronaut!

Mom and Dad celebrated their wedding anniversary this evening by going out to dinner with Nigel. They went to a nice Italian restaurant that turned out to be great for kids. In addition to crayons and a paper tablecloth, Nigel was provided a ball of pizza dough to shape. Once formed, the server took the dough back to the kitchen, where the chef topped and baked it to make a pizza to Nigel's specification! (Cheese and olives, in this case.)

Nigel tried some new foods, Mom got some lovely seafood (a rare treat for her), and they all shared an assortment of desserts. While waiting for dessert, everyone made funny drawings on the tablecloth. Dad re-created a comic panel from web comic XKCD that he and Nigel particularly like ("Look, Mom and Dad, warm box is making breakfast!"). Mom started drawing a rocket ship, but it ended up looking somewhat more like a fish, and she dubbed it a "Fishtronaut" - a fish with a rocket engine for a tail, that could launch itself out of the ocean and into orbit. Many silly stories were told about the fishtronaut, and laughter filled the occasion.

2016-01-24: Pictures Interfere with Reading

Nigel told Mom today that pictures in books distract him and slow him down, limiting his reading time.