Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Isaac Updates

1) Pamela cut Isaac's hair this morning, turning his wildly uneven Don King mane into a more reasonable spongy 'fro. It added a full year to his look, and he really looks like a little boy now. And unless I'm reading it wrong, I think he thinks he looks smooth now. He's shooting some poses. Surprisingly, he sat still for the whole cut.

2) Isaac continues to be destroyer of technology. This time, he KILLED MY KINDLE. Yes, he somehow delivered a blunt force trauma to my book reader that it was unable to recover from. The kindle has survived falls from tables, jostling unprotected in my laptop bag, squeezing under airplane seats, many accidental "being sat on" moments... and somehow he got it for 2 minutes and it was toast... and not even with an audible event that I can recall. The top quarter of the screen was garbled, and it would freeze up... and yes, it's a month past warranty, so they got me a replacement for well under half price, but it still cost a few pennies. But I'm taking better care of this one, using the leather case, and keeping it WELL AWAY from the kid.

For those keeping score at home, that's 3 ipods, 2 ipod docks, 1 camera, and 1 kindle creatively destroyed. AND I caught him feeding CDs into the Playstation 3 - two were already crammed in and he was trying for a third. Fortunately nothing broke. Yet.

3) Isaac's favorite bedtime story is "Going on a Bear Hunt", which is an adventure going to find a bear and crossing fields, river, mud, forest, snowstorm, finding the bear, and quick running back. When we find the bear, he SHRIEKS "A BEAR!!!!". We read this 2-3 times before bed and then he's out.

4) Isaac has a cute accent developing - sort of like Morgan Freeman: There's a dialect I think around Philly where the word "Turn" is pronounced "Toine". A lot of what Isaac says has this little "oi" sound in it: Mine is Moine, etc. Look, it just reminds me of Morgan Freeman, and maybe nobody else hears it that way. But I do.

5) I intentionally let Isaac have a piece of technology: I loaded up my Nintendo DS with the "Electroplankton" music game - you'll recall I bought this in Japan. It's a total intuitive musical toy with strange little creatures that make noise when you tap them with the stylus... very hypnotic, and very Japanese. Well, I thought that Isaac might like to try it. He played with it an hour straight, and has asked for it many times since. He loves the music, he loves the creatures, and he can navigate through the system like a champ (even though the instructions are in japanese... he can't read English either, right?) And he hasn't broken it either. Very fun to watch.

I'll have a Bella update in a day or two, but I wanted to share some of what that boy has been up to.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the update. A question: what happens to your library once the Kindle is kaput? You had quite a collection, didn't you? Do you have a removable storage unit that you use for it? Is it indestructable?
I like to think about kids and delicate things - sort of like how humans are with the environment and our thoughts and words, etc - mostly unintentioned harm, coupled with the glee of breaking something. Do we ever get over it?

Jimmy B said...

Ah that's the beauty of Kindle: Everything you ever buy is saved at Amazon, and you can reload it any time. I tended to delete things I had already read...

So with the new Kindle, I was able to reload it directly from my amazon library. It is supersweet.

Isaac is a walking lesson in impermanence - Never get too attached to objects... objects are temporary in the world. Especially temporary around Isaac. ;->

Anonymous said...

What a beautiful way of expressing it - "a walking lesson in impermanence". I will smile about that phrase all day. Thank you!