Heat

The days have been hot, hot hot. Grayson and I sit, sweaty arms stuck to the dining room table, heads bent over math and grammar and writing, ceiling fans whirring in every room but ours. We get the large light fixture. Incandescent bulbs and recessed lighting add another 5 degrees to our heads. We fill and refill Ball jars with ice from the icemaker and water. These leave plate-sized puddles of water on the table. We move the books around the water, protecting all the paper from the pools. It is too hot for him to protest all the writing. He methodically unsticks his arm from the page over and over again.

I learned something new about him today. After spending three days working on a difficult math concept, a breakthrough. I taught him the principles, demonstrated the use, and set him to practice problems. He struggled through them for a day or so while I resisted giving him the answers. I explained the principles again, but did not demonstrate on the problems he was working. Finally, he found himself stuck on one he could not find a way to apply the principles to and solve. Maybe some whining was involved. I got frustrated and took the pencil. I leaned across the table and silently, angrily, solved it. He gasped a quiet "Oh" and polished off the rest of the page with a flurry of pencil and computing and smiling.

My son needs to be shown as many variations as possible. I plan on saving my voice quite a bit here forth.