Synapses firing

Zach has a speech therapist named Iris who comes to our house, and when she gets here, they make up a little schedule of what they are going to do together. She has a whole bunch of icons of all different activities (trains, painting, Legos, etc.) and they pick the activities and velcro the icons onto a timeline to map out their time together. On Saturday, Zach noticed that she had an icon with a picture of a glass of juice, labeled simply, "Juice." I believe Iris uses it as an icon to denote a snack break, like when a kid takes a break and has a cup of juice. But Zach interpreted it to mean, "Time to make juice." So he gleefully added "juice" to the schedule, and when the appointed "juice" time rolled around, Zach got out some cups, some oranges, and the juicer. Iris was embarrassed and apologetic that they were making a mess in the kitchen, but at the same time she was clearly delighted at his charming interpretation of the "juice" icon. Apparently this is the first time a kid has ever been inspired to make juice when given "juice" time. You know that book "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie"? Zach is totally the mouse in that book. Give him an idea for a project and he will take the inspiration and run with it.

Luke's class has been working with iPads at school and he has an app on there called "BrainPop" that has all sorts of unusual science facts. We'll be having a conversation about something and all of a sudden Luke will jump in with some random yet detailed explanation of a science fact (black holes, for example) that is perfectly fitting to the occasion. Anyway, Dave was driving us all in his car today when some lady cut him off. Dave started to say, "What a stupid..." and I jumped in before he could get too far and said, "You know what? I feel sorry for her. Because for her to make a driving mistake like that, it probably means she doesn't have a lot of brain cells. And it must be really hard for her to make it through her life with not as many brain cells as other people." Then from the back seat, Luke announced, "If you built 15 Marriotts entirely out of grains of sand, each grain of sand would represent one synapse in your brain. That's how many synapses we have." This kind of stunned me and Dave into silence for a moment, until I added, "So I think that lady only had one Marriott." And we laughed all the way home about the poor one-Marriott lady who just doesn't have the brain power to know how to drive like a normal person.