DadaMama: 5 1/2

Gus is in love with my calculator. He calls it a "caulk-u-lator" and asks for it every day when he gets home from school. He has a Transformer missile that he uses as a stylus to punch the keys. He performs many Important Calculations, which he carefully records in a notebook. He writes in pen, because the calculations are Official.

Did you know that the distance from the Earth to the Moon is 150 miles? And that the center of the Jenga tower is 34?

Me neither. Both numbers were arrived at after many minutes of intense concentration and then meticulously documented for posterity.

Gus has shown himself to be of a highly analytical and methodical mind. On the first day of school he came home and confessed his disappointment in kindergarten. "We didn't do any science," he said, and sighed heavily. What he really needs is a lab under the house.

These days, he talks incessantly about earthquakes and volcanoes. "They're my kind of science thing," he explains. "I like them so much." He's also into astronomy, insects, and the evolution of planets; he claims the latter come from "the future."

Gus is 5 1/2. He asked me a couple of days ago when he would be closer to 6, and I realized that he was halfway there on October 3rd. Oh, how time flies, blah blah blah, cliche, <SOB>.

He wears a polo shirt to school every day. He loves the ladies. A couple of weeks ago, as I was picking him up at the bike racks, he pointed out a little girl wearing a Hello Kitty backpack. "You see that girl, Mom?" he said. "That's Emma. She's pretty cute."

He looked up at me with a shy half-smile, and I was suddenly able to see where this is all going. To Gus in high school, still wearing a polo shirt, but taller, possibly with gel in his hair and the smell of too much cologne wafting around him.

The girls are going to love those freckles of his, and his earnest hazel eyes. He's going to love all the science.