Chess and Star Wars Legos

Given what I understand of Ethan’s personality, I’ve been surprised at his intrigue with the game of chess. It started at the library (at least my knowledge of it), where there are a few chessboards near the older-kid comic books and graphic novels (Ethan’s affinity to which is completely consistent with his general disposition, including the fascination with the depiction of females within them).

He really wanted to play chess one day, and I figured we’d last about 3 minutes before he got bored, since there are so many rules. He lasted a lot longer, and despite griping about not being able to move pawns backwards, not being allowed to capture every piece under the knights 3-square move, and moaning when I took his pieces, he seemed to enjoy it.

Since then he’s memorized how to set up the board, and has learned how to move many of the pieces. He’s starting to think about the moves ahead of time, although it’s still a challenge to figure out how to let him win. As far as I can tell, the parts he likes about the game are: it’s about war, there are rules, you get to capture the other person’s pieces and keep them on your side, and repeatedly count them and taunt the other person that you’re winning (because if you’re not winning you cry and complain).

Ethan is also quite obsessed with Star War Legos. The more of them you have, the cooler you are, according to Ethan. He doesn’t really like putting together the kits, even the easy ones, but he likes having the finished space ships and figures. He makes little scenes with the pieces – with good guys on one side, and bad guys on the other, both aiming various weapons at each other.

Notice the war/fight/weapons theme? The other day we were playing with lego Darth Vadar and lego Luke Skywalker and they were having a lightsaber fight. Wooze, wooze, wooze (lightsaber noises). I was getting tired, not just of being told everything to do and not being allowed to make up any dialogue myself, but all this violence is not my favorite thing. So I finally said out of exasperation something like, “Can’t we have a tea party”, which was supposed to be ironic and funny.

Actually, he liked the idea (which suggests to me that he doesn’t know about the general gender preferences for this activity). He dutifully got out what passes for our tea set (a set of toy garden tools with the pots serving as tea cups), and started pouring tea. But to my dismay, the violence quickly returned when a tiger came to attack the tea party, and suddenly it was the host wielding a piece of orange Hotwheels car track as a sword (anything long will do!) to defend against the dangerous feline. And so it goes with all games – they all digress into some sort of fight that involves guns, swords, and a certain amount of pounding, hitting, slashing and pretend injuries.

Cross Country Skis

We bought Ethan a cross-country ski set last night. Sort of a spontaneous purchase, sort of not. (Hard to buy them since you know they’ll last no more than one season, but on the other hand, you get out on them more when you own them. Final justification: the cost of an entire x-country ski set is less than two days of lift tickets at a down-hill center.) Hopefully my passion for x-country skiing will make up for its obscurity in the social lives of his age group. I feel a bit pressured to take Ethan ice-skating and downhill skiing since that’s what other kids are doing, but they just are not my favorite activities.

Anyway, I’m incredibly psyched since x-country skiing one of my all-time favorite things to do in life, and now we can do it together without a huge deal. We got home last night just as it was getting dark, but we managed to ski around the house and yard to the light from the house and streetlights. Today I’m planning on picking Ethan up from school, and taking him over to the Minute Man Trail near our house to ski for a bit.

For some odd reason, Ethan doesn’t use the word ‘people’, but instead calls them ‘humans’. So, where someone else might said, “I see a bunch of people over there”, Ethan will instead say, “I see some humans over there.” Not sure why he does this, but it’s sort of cute.

Four Feet and 50 pounds

Ethan had his annual check-up the other day and he was almost exactly four feet tall, and 50 pounds. According to a growth chart calculator, this puts him in the 64th percentile for height, and the 54th percentile for weight. Interestingly, these growth calculations are usually based on world-wide figures, not US figures, so most US kids are expected to be a bit bigger. People keep commenting on how tall Ethan is, but maybe that’s because he’s a bit thin, or maybe it’s because mama and papa still dress him in some pants that are way too short (he doesn’t seem to notice, so why get rid of the high risers?)

Speaking of nerdy pants, Ethan is going through a phase right now where he’s very concerned about being “cool”. Apparently, according to Ethan, that means having lots of Pokemon cards, and lots of Star Wars things, especially Star Wars Legos. Unfortunately for six-year olds, Star War Legos are also hot collectors items among a certain type of adult male, who Mark speculates, do not have girlfriends. This gives great incentive to Lego to issue only a few figures at a time, to keep their availability low, and consequently prices high. Ethan is saving up his dollars right now to buy a bigger star ship, which will inevitably be put together by his parents.

A few weeks ago Mark and I were trying to watch the new batman movie, The Dark Night. Ethan just could not stand it, because he wasn’t allowed to watch with us. Finally, totally frustrated at not having been able to watch a grownup movie in a while, I told Ethan that he could stay and watch Trouble In Paradise with us, a 1930’s black and white romantic comedy classic, or go up and watch his own DVD. Much to my surprise, he chose the former, and I figured that he’d last maybe 10 minutes, since at that age I was incredibly bored by that sort of thing. But the little guy managed to sit through the whole thing, ask relevant questions throughout, and enjoy it a lot. Go figure. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad surreptiously watched the superhero flick on a much quieter computer DVD player up in their room late one night after little one had gone to sleep.