Is this real?

9yo hopped into my bed in the early hours after The Linux Geek left for work. After chilling for a bit he asked me: “Is this real or is this a dream?”

“I think so,” I replied after a moment’s hesitation. “There’s a creation myth, can’t remember whose, maybe one of the Native American tribes, about how the entire universe is the dream of some god and when that god wakes up we’ll all stop existing.”

Creepers are the same as TNT

5yo: creepers are the same as TNT just with legs and green and walking.

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

Five

The youngest is officially “school age” because someone in their infinite wisdom decided that Preprimary should be compulsory.

We have graduated from babies and toddlers to all “school aged” kids.

I asked him if he would like to go to school this year seeing as he was old enough. No, he says, “I want to home school.” He pronounced it carefully as two separate words. He pronounces everything carefully, maybe because he knows he stammers if he tries to talk too fast or feels flustered. He has a decent vocabulary for 5, I think, probably because he copies a lot of what comes out of the mouths of his siblings (mostly good, some reminds me that I need to watch how I talk to myself).

Kung fu pro-tips

• block the other person’s weapon (even if it is a fan) with your weapon (which may also be a fan), not with your hand. Especially if the other person’s fan has metal ribs
• when lion dance training after taking such an injury, don’t lift the head when you have to hold the mouth shut
• when walking through door frames, make sure you fit through the doorframe. Do not get distracted by small dogs attempting to run outside, and definitely do not clock the alleged “funny” bone on the doorframe to the point where you lose all feeling in your hand for a little while (preceded and followed by HOLEY SHEET THAT HURTS), especially if it’s the arm with the hand that doesn’t have aforementioned wrist injury on it

Not that this has ever happened to me, definitely not in the last week, because who would be so dumb.

The company I keep

Or rather hang around the periphery of and watch.

I saw this on the front page of deviantART (hey the front page is good for something after all ;) when I went to log in:

[missing image]

Lightning La Buff Bust by mattj324

In my usual fashion after dropping in to leave a boring “wow” type comment, I went through the rest of the person’s gallery and then watched them.

8 hour freaking speed sculpt. I’d seriously be happy if I got something anywhere approaching that in a month (but more likely more considering the speed at which I work). I can run the usual excuses about how I generally don’t get 8hr sittings for anything (okay sleep but I’m generally lying down then) but it gets to a point where I wonder if the people I watch are prodigious or whether that’s a normal amount of time and I’m just exceedingly, agonisingly slow (my usual thought).

Tight sleeves

[9yo is playing one of the board games on Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag and is winning]

me: Careful, he may have something up his sleeve.
9yo: They’re pretty tight sleeves.
me: That’s coz they’re modelled on.
9yo: I know that!

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Nine

Just like that, he is in the last of the single digits.

He has three friends he considers besties (and occasionally categorises them according to favoured activities with those particular people), and finds it easy to play with other kids he has never seen before and may never see again (I suppose we can be less dramatic, we don’t live in the biggest city in the world). He does some rather scarily accurate trollfaces (do an image search, it’s not too traumatising unless you don’t like caricature). He still loves playing footy and following it (but prefers tv to going to games because that way he can wander off and play and then come back in to see how things are going). He likes to run, and run, and run. And build things with Lego. And play PS3 and PC games that declare us obviously bad parents who don’t care about their kids (because they’re MA15+ games). His favourite games are Minecraft and StarCraft. He likes playing Robot Turtle with function frogs (which is a bit above what his sister is capable of and way above what his brother is currently capable of. He wants to learn how to program and design and build robots to “help make the world a better place” and plan towns/cities so that humans can live with what they want and need without completely destroying the homes of other animals.

All in the power of touch

[7yo comes running inside, I tell her it’s bathtime]

7yo: But we found a grasshopper or a locust outside!
me: How do you know it’s a grasshopper or locust?
7yo: Because it looks like one!
me: Why don’t you look up pictures on the internet and see if you can tell the difference.

[We go to 7yo’s room, she grabs a small paintbrush]

me: …what are you doing?
7yo [holding up paintbrush]: Scientists have discovered it’s all in the power of touch! And they used a paintbrush!

Faster than a Lamborghini!

15yo: Nothing is faster than a Lamborghini!
8yo: Except maybe a faster Lamborghini!

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Humans

[8yo is playing Civilisation Revolution on the PS3, I glimpse a city I think is called Berlin but not sure whether it’s his or computer’s]
me [not thinking]: what race are you playing?
8yo [looking at me like I’m an idiot]: …humans.
{I kick pre-caffeinated brain into some form of gear]
me: what CIVILISATION are you playing?
8yo: Oh. Germans.

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License