Caleb has always been full of “one-liners.” He has always used words and came up “Calebisms” like no other child I've ever been around. His teacher even told me that if someone doesn't know the meaning of a word in their class, she tells them to go ask Caleb. Recently, however, we had a class project that involved lots of unfamiliar words. He had to create a family totem pole. He had to choose an animal to represent each member of his family to put on the pole. The sheet of animals he had to choose from also had very elaborate descriptions of each animal, thus, the long words. The sheet read more like a horoscope. Well, Caleb had chosen an animal/insect for everyone and had to make index cards to describe each choice. The cards would be read aloud in class. Caleb promptly began copying, one for word, the descriptions from the sheet onto his cards. He kept stopping to ask my help because he couldn't pronounce or didn't know the meaning of a word. To make a long story short, Caleb was beyond frustrated. After all, “words” are his thing. I encouraged him to stop copying and put things into his on words. Overjoyed he said, “Yup, I write my own stuff, I know what all the words mean.” I had this quote on my blog so I could remember to blog the story. I'm so glad he decided to stop copying. Caleb said I was the “Bee” and one of the bee descriptive words was, “fertile.” Yes, he was about to tell his entire class that his mother, the bee, was fertile. Geesh. Thank goodness he stopped copying! I'll post totem pole photos when we get his project back.
Caleb and I have also talked about a poster hanging in his classroom at school. It reads, “Courage is doing the right thing when everyone around you is doing the wrong thing.” Caleb informed me that this was the word “testimony” could replace “courage” and the poster would still be correct. I think he's right. We really see how strong our testimony is when we make the decision to follow or not follow the crowd. It's easy not to drink alcohol, dress immodestly, when none of our friends are doing it. Caleb is my introspective child. He's always thinking. I just hope he keeps talking to his old mother, I still have a lot to learn from him!
