Another lovely report from my Mom:

Tuesday April 10th 2013

While Paul made the usual really nice dinner Gavin cuddled with me on your wonderful couch for his five minutes with IPhone angry birds and taught me the basics, and ClaraJane and I discussed Signing Time and practiced making letters of the alphabet with our hands.  At dinner ClaraJane deployed her “baby bird”mouth  signals for inserting mouthfuls of food and Gavin learned about artichoke eating and how to go easy on the garlic sauce.  Gavin then asked nicely to be excused and invited me to do some sketching at his desk when I finished dinner.

When I was excused and joined him he had set up paper and a lovely set of crayons on his desk in readiness for our sketching session and offered me the best seat, the one attached to the desk.  Unfortunately I am still too large to fit there despite having lost 28 pounds since 2006, according to my doctor at a recent office visit.  So we traded seats and I sat on the adjacent bench. Gavin told me the history of the desk, that it was yours when you were little in California.  (Close, right?)

You can have the good seat, Grandma

Gavin then proceeded to create a lovely spring scene on paper, even doing a good job of placating ClaraJane, who wanted to participate, or at least interfere.  He started with a tree, with a hole in it for a nest for birds, then an adjacent beehive and nearby flower garden with flowers in bud and flowers fully open, so the bees could gather “nectar to make honey.”  He had me draw lines of bees visiting flowers and he made them look much more beelike with black stripes.  Flowers need sun, and rain. Rain needs clouds.  I showed him how to make a flying bird in silhouette, and he added a branch to the tree so there would be another place for a bird’s nest.  I drew a baby bird in the nest with its mouth open for food and he asked me to write “chirp! chirp!” beside it.  Then we put in some wobbly baby birds trying to learn to fly while their parents hovered overhead encouraging them.  He asked me to write his name in cursive starting with an uppercase G and we showed the finished creation to Daddy, and put it in a place we hoped you would see it, too.

I saw it!

On the drive from Normandy to Windsor Gavin asked whether “Never World” with Captain Hook is a real place.  I explained what I could remember about the Peter Pan story and Neverland and Pixie Dust and how it was a wonderful pretend story where children could fly and boys never grew up, and Wendy sewed Peter’s shadow back on and Captain Hook’s hand was bitten off by a crocodile who had swallowed a clock.

Never World

We talked about the relative merits of growing up or staying a child and how being a child all your life might sound fun because you could just play and be taken care of, but you would miss so many interesting things about growing up, such as learning to read and doing all the things you learn as you get bigger.   And the Lost Boys didn’t have any grownups telling them what to do, but on the other hand, there was no Mom and Dad to take care of them.  And Gavin wondered how they got food.  We speculated about fish and fruit.

PARENT = FOOD

At Tobin Amanda arrived to pick up Miles at 3:30 since she’d had 6 hours of sleep on call. First the boys hid from us under the benches, per usual, this never gets old, then they became zombies and then cheetahs and attacked us.

A Typical  Day

They both rode with Amanda and we all went to Normandy.  Amanda had sidewalk chalk and the boys learned about hopscotch on two legs and then one leg, and then how to draw the hopscotch grid.  Neighbor Nick came home and the boys generously invited him and his roommates to use the Hopscotch grid any time.

You guys can use this any time

The basketball needed air and we didn’t have the needle adaptor for the bicycle pump, so no dribbling, but in the soccer ball low air didn’t matter as much, so Miles kicked that around while Gavin put on a helmet and rode the Razor.  James brought sandwiches out once he finished his phone interview and they got ready for a bike ride while Gavin and I drove to Windsor.

Gavin was charming, sharing, and kind all evening without even a mention of a feather.

Flamly Symbol for Bravery and Kindness

♥Thank you♥ Mom!

PS:  And the next day, a la mode, he drew this:

Spring by Gavin, a la Bubble Wow