Nathan swung on a big boy swing all by himself for the first time this morning. The playground across River Street from Whole Fooods has a swing that is low enough for a 3 foot tall person to climb into and start pumping. We played at the playground while Lisa was doing grocery shopping. I only had my cell phone camera, but I did manage snap picture.
Nathan was inspired to design and build a vehicle using his Brio tools last week. What he came up with is a Mud Truck which can clean the mud out of farmer’s markets. He has asked me to listen to his pitch about the features and capabilities of this cleverly engineered machine more than once. I love listening him to him talk about it so I asked him if he would show the video camera, and he said yes. He clammed up a little once the video camera was on, but he does get going after a little while. I posted the video along with a transcript so those of you not fluent in NayNay language can follow along.
My mother likes to tell a story about when I was 6 years old and asked a waitress what brand ice cream they served. I then refused to order any when she said it was generic. It seems that Nathan is developing a similarly sophisticated palate. Today at the bank he was given a Hershey Kiss which he happily accepted and consumed. When he was done he said that it wasn’t as good as Lindt chocolate though and that he perferred Lindt dark chocolate to the milk chocolate Hershey’s.
Nathan had a great time playing on all of the trucks and diggers at the vehicle road show this morning. Unfortunately it was very chilly this morning and we should have been wearing our winter jackets. If you look at the photos page you will see Nathan slowing adding layers as we went along. Every vehicle that was there runs on biodiesel.
Speaking of Nathan’s hearing too much on the radio, I played him a song I probably shouldn’t have today. See he likes this snack called Veggie Booty (and the cheese flavor, Pirate Booty). So I was all like “Hey, professor what’s another name for pirate treasure? Why I think it’s booty-booty, whichiwhichiwhici BOOTY.” Which some readers may recogize the opening to the Beastie Boys’ opus “Professor Booty.” I told him I’d play it for him when we got home. I bought it from iTunes, synched the iPod and put it on the stereo.
So the song kicks off with this whole part I’d somehow for gotten.
“What’s up with your girl, I hear she been givin’ that sh*t out to all them graffitti guys” “Yo, shut the f*ck up, Chico, man!” “I’d paint three noodles for that ass!”
Oops. Then came the ‘Hey, Professor’ part, which was great and then… How could forget these immortal lines which I used to say so often even Lisa would say it sometimes…
“I got more bounce than a f*ckin’ bump, and then you wanna know why because I’m motherf*ckin’ chunking!”
Hmmmmm… maybe I shouldn’t add this one to Nathan’s playlist….
He’s sleeping over at his grandmother’s tonight, hopefully he’s not swearing his ASS off.
Yesterday Nathan turned on the radio for me. As soon as it turned on we heard something like,”…based on skin color or tribal affiliation they are grabbing kids of the street and throwing them on bonfires.” Nathan said, “What are they talking about?” I said it was terrible story about people who were really mean and nasty. I turned the radio off and he said, “No I like this story.” Too bad. The radio stayed off as I didn’t want him to hear anything else about Darfur. For a few minutes after I had to field more questions like, “Do those people have angry faces on?” Yes. “What’s a bonfire?….
So I don’t get to listen to NPR 24/7 anymore. I guess I’ll have to find an alternative.
I’ve accepted a position at ATG a web development company in Cambridge. This is a big step for me because I’ve worked at MIT since I got out of college. I agonized over this decision because I love my work at MIT. I finally decided to be adventurous and try this out - and it’s going to be great. The team I’ll be working with at ATG is very impressive, and I will learn a lot from them.
Since I’ve been telling people I keep answering the same few questions. So here you go:
Nathan has been playing on his own lately which has been really nice for me. Today he went to the other room for a while so I sat back and relaxed while I read my email. Since he was so quiet I asked him what he was doing. Usually I avoid calling out to him since it invariably ends the playing. This time though he just called back,”I’m cleaning up!” I thought that sounded pretty good so I kept checking my email. Well it turned out he had good reason to be cleaning up.
Nathan went to see Oscar the Man (his barber) and Oscar offered him some hair gel. Nathan was pretty proud of the results.
One of the pleasures of working at MIT is wandering into weird geek performance are like this. See this table can hold a lot of weight. It’s loaded with blocks of concrete and the 5 people who worked un it got up and stood of top of it. That’ts it. Just the pleasure of building a table that can hold a heck of a lot of weight.
