Aaron Birthday Interview

Aaron's birthday was last week, the day after Thanksgiving. We knew we would be out of town, so we started the celebration the Sunday before, with good family friends and homemade sushi. Aaron and Lars were the head chefs. It was quite a feast.

We had an Oreo cake. Ten candles!!

It's really difficult to believe that Aaron is ten years old. He is such a wonderful kid and an important part of our family life. He's kind and caring, helpful, understanding, and incredibly reasonable. He can even be enthusiastic when he chooses to be, which is exciting and rare. 

He loves to build...

And revels in joining his dad with taking assigned tasks (or games) and twisting them in whatever ways possible, like a few months ago when they gave us paper strips to weave baskets at the art museum...

Aaron doesn't love to pose for photos, but occasionally he will, but not usually seriously, as with here with Great Grandma Person...

We were so happy to be able to spend a lot of the summer in Utah this year. It was tough to watch Grandpa be sick and get sicker, but we relished the moments we were able to hang out. Even on nights when he was so tired he could hardly lift his arms, he was usually up for a game of Up and Down the River when Aaron requested it.

We love our Aaron so much and look forward to many more years of watching him grow. He is such a great big brother and son. Here is his interview from a few weeks ago:


How old are you?
Ten

What grade are you in?
Fourth

Who are your teachers?
Mr. Schanck, Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Snyder, Mrs. Dukes, Ms. DeVerges, Mr. Morgan, Mrs. Sullivan

Who's your favorite teacher?
Mr. Schanck.

What's your favorite class and why?
Math because I like it.

What are your favorite foods:
Alaskan wild crab legs sauteed in butter and thyme, sushi, and freshly grilled rare steaks with corn on the cob and mashed potatoes with gravy.

What's your favorite dessert?
Mile high apple pie, with sugar on top.

If you could spend a week anywhere, where would you go and what would you do?
I would go to India and see elephants in the wild, taste a bunch of food, and just learn the general culture.

If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it?
Put it in a good bank, and put a little bit in stocks.

If you could be any animal, what would you be?
Human.

What makes you feel happy?

Fishing.

What do you like about being a kid?
I like being a kid because you don't have a job.

What do you not like about being a kid?
You can't have a job.

What would you do for a job if you could have one?
A stock broker.

What job do you want to have when you grow up?
I want to be a marine biologist.

What's a happy memory you  have?
Being in North Carolina with Aunt Zeta and catching two catfish and three white bass. We went on a big campout right next to a lake.

What do you like to do for fun?
Go fishing. What else would I do for fun?

What else do you do for fun?
Read.

What are some books you really like?
I like the Harry Potter series, the Percy Jackson series, the Olympian series, the King on the Throne series, the Hatchet series...

What do you think you will be doing in ten years from now?
I think I will be finishing my mission. I will be actually.

What would be your ideal allowance and how would you spend it?
Reasonably? $1 if I didn't do anything, $5 if I was extra helpful. I would save it. I would put it in my bank account. I don't know what I would save it for. Just for general use.

Name something you'd like to do with the family on a weekend:
I would like to go on a campout up in the mountains of northeastern Oklahoma.

One word to describe you?
Awesome.

Finish this sentence. I wish there were a law that said...
that there was no homework ever. And that all the kids who can show that they will try to have jobs will have their own personal lawyers and investigators and employers. And only if they want to, kids can be employed.

What advice would you give your little siblings?
Maya: start walking more for general use.
Libbie: Listen a little bit more.
Elliot: Nothing.

Anything else you want to add?
No. This is getting tedious. And excessive.

Adventures in Sleepwalking

Over the past year, Aaron has had a few episodes of sleepwalking. The first time or two I was just confused. Why is Aaron walking around aimlessly in the middle of the night? I would usually talk to him, sometimes he would look at me and answer but not really intelligibly. I just guided him back to bed and tucked him in. He never remembers anything the next morning. These episodes have been far enough apart that it took a few of them for me to really register that Aaron sleepwalks. It's like every time it happens I have to go through the same motions of trying to figure out why he is out of bed and being confused at his lack of responsiveness.

The night before last, as Ben and I were getting ready for bed (about 11 pm), Aaron appeared in the hallway. I walked over to him and he stood there, his hands clasped behind his back, slightly rocking back and forth. He looked at me like he was about to say something but then just kept rocking and staring. I walked over, joking with him about why he was standing in the hallway in the middle of the night. He didn't respond, so I encouraged him to use the bathroom and then head back to bed. He continued to stare and rock. It kind of freaked me out. It was like he was a shell of himself. So I hugged him and stroked his back and said, "Do you need to go potty? Just go ahead and then go back to bed." He nodded and walked down the hallway, away from the bathroom and towards the kitchen. By now I had realized that he was definitely sleepwalking so I watched him walk down the hall towards the kitchen, chuckling to myself. I watched him walk into the kitchen, open the freezer drawer, then pull his pants down as if to pee. I stopped laughing and yelled, "Aaron! Wait! No!" and ran over, closed the freezer, and led him to the toilet. I left him standing in front of the toilet, thinking he would take over from there. A minute or so later, as Ben and I stood in the hallway laughing hysterically about our son almost peeing in the freezer, we heard Aaron whining and mumbling. He was struggling with his belt (yes, he sometimes falls asleep with his belt on...I know, sounds terribly uncomfortable, but not worth fighting him over), so I took it off for him but he just kept fidgeting and whining, trying to talk but not able to make actual words. He was shaking, staring at his hands, mumbling and crying. I kept trying to wake him up, looking into his eyes and calling his name, getting pretty freaked out at his behavior. Finally I remembered that in the past I would just walk him back to bed and he would snuggle in and go right back to sleep. So we did that. Since he was crying, I lay next to him and read to him for a few minutes until his eyes closed again.

Watching your nine year old try to pee into the freezer is hilarious. Watching him shake and cry and blabber while looking at you with glossed over eyes is not fun. Of course, the next morning he didn't remember anything of his nighttime adventures and was back to his normal self. So strange.

Internet research assures me this is within the range of normal (1-2% of school-aged kids sleepwalk) and that the best thing to do is just keep him safe and take him back to bed. Such a strange (and potentially amusing) habit.

Aaron's Adventure in North Carolina

Today is my sister Kerrylin's birthday. When I talked to her this morning, she was headed out to the beach to stay at the same hotel we all stayed in a couple of months ago. It reminded me that I have a few blog posts half-done and waiting to be finished and posted from our summer vacation. So, with her in mind on her birthday today, I am starting the summer catchup with a report of her time with Aaron back in mid-June. Here it is...

A few years ago we spent a blissful week in a cabin in North Carolina with my sister Kerrylin. Ever since then, Aaron has been planning a time when he could go by himself to NC and spend time with Kerrylin ("Aunt Zeta"). We were a little skeptical about if/how that might happen but he was persistent and we finally found a good time. Since we were taking the friend-tour route home from NYC it wasn't too far out of the way to stop in NC and see my sister on our way home. So, with Aaron's help and various types of contributions, we arranged for Aaron to fly home by himself a few days after the rest of us left. He spent a blissful three days hanging out and fishing with Aunt Zeta. Zeta is the person closest to Aaron who genuinely enjoys fishing for hours on end (and we are infinitely grateful for that. So nice to have someone we love and trust who is happy to fish with Aaron.) So, of course, Aaron took full advantage of that and he and Kerrylin went fishing as often as possible.

One night they got a campsite right by a lake. 

The campsite was literally right by the lake

They fished late into the night, ate their catches for dinner, then fished again the next morning (after a s'more pancake breakfast of course).

Of course no trip to NC would be complete without a fish fry...

Complete with fried fish, cole slaw, corn, and hush puppies

Kerrylin and Aaron stringing up their catches

They even got to go boat fishing, thanks to Kerrylin's friend who generously offered her boat and fishing skills for the morning.

So happy

One morning they made a pancake breakfast at her place. Aaron declared that his breakfast was fit for Hagrid. 

According to reports, Aaron ate most of those pancakes himself

Thanks Zeta for making Aaron's summer! Aaron had a marvelous time and still talks about it.

Two conversations

Elliot woke up this morning, came to me and we had the following conversation:

Elliot: "I'm sad.
K: "Why are you sad?"
E: "Because I had a plane, a truck, and a costume, and now I don't have them anymore."
K: "Oh darn it. It must have been a dream."
E: "I want to go back to that dream!"

And then this afternoon while I was walking with Aaron we started talking about facial hair and Aaron said, "Tato doesn't have facial hair. He just has hair on his chin." So true. We decided he was cuter that way.

Aaron

Happy Birthday, Aaron!

We love our seven year old--our strategist and survivalist, planner and manager, reader and sous-chef all rolled up into one. He is such a great part of our family.

Aaron loves to dream up schemes. Big schemes. Schemes big enough that they end in his raising enough money to buy a cabin in the woods near a big lake full of fish. A bit back he was considering being a doctor, although we warned him that medical school, despite the familiar exposure to guts, does not exactly lead one to fishing everyday. (In fact real fisherman, he learned this summer, have a particular distaste for the lawyers and doctors that stir the lake with their speedy weekend boats.) His latest plan of action rose to the surface the other day when Ben and I were talking to him about high school proms, which happened to come up during an early morning conversation in bed. (It is, may I add, tremendous fun to have a kid that can just sit and talk with you for hours!) After listening to our diverging explanations of proms, he succinctly interjected, "Well, I'm not going to go to prom because I will be too busy collecting wild tigers and elephants in Asia and Africa to start a zoo." When asked, he revealed that the purpose for the zoo--an idea inspired by two Williard Price books, South Sea Adventure and Arctic Adventure which he recently read--was, again, to gather enough funds to free him to fish all day.

It follows to note that Aaron has been reading voraciously for the past few months, which we understand as in part a reaction to the significant language gaps that occupy him for the rest of the day at school. While we love it in general, the phrase "Aaron, put the book down!" is pretty common around here. If he starts a book he likes, he won't put it down until it's over or until we make him. Subsequently we have had to develop rules that dictate when he can read and when he can't, because otherwise he would be reading most of the time. Last week, for example, he read Edward Eager's "The Well-Wishers" over the period of about twenty-four hours, on a school day. I wish all the books he read were as good as that one, but unfortunately that is not the case. Not only is it hard to find good books that are both at his reading level and not inane. It can also be hard to find excellent children's books in English in Jerusalem. (We are, as always, open for suggestions for both titles and stores.) A partial list of titles can be found on his GoodReads profile (feel free to 'friend' him if you're interested).

Aaron's best friend here is a seven-year-old American boy in the neighborhood named Joshua. They run through the side streets and woods with smiles on their faces and projects on their minds, building helmets and shields out of cardboard, sculpting animals out of clay, reading books together, making fake animal droppings out of mud and leaving them in conspicuous places, you get the drift. Most everything boys do.

Aaron loves to experiment with jokes, usually following the family tradition of attempting--and that is the key word--a play on words or a paradox. At dinner the other day, for example, he said something along the lines of, "A man wanted some food, so he went to Hungary, then decided to go to Turkey and then to Greece for some more grease." Sometimes he makes up jokes based on things he heard before. Yesterday we were eating breakfast, for example, when Aaron relayed to me the stumper: "I have a joke," Aaron begins. "A kid says to his father, 'Are fathers always smarter than their kids?' and the dad said, 'Yes.' So then the kid says, 'Well, who invented the first steam engine?' And the dad says, 'John Tsiopan.' So the kid says, "Well, why didn't his father invent it? Or his father, or his father, or his father?' You get it? Because fathers can't always be smarter than their kids." Ben, who told him the original joke (which names James Watt the inventor), gets an especially big kick out of this one!

Aaron likes to draw, although he doesn't do it very often. When he does, though, he can get very serious about it. He sits and draws very carefully, erasing extra lines with some meticulousness. When he is finally satisfied, he displays the end product with pride, as he is doing here with this dragon:

Aaron loves anything related to wildlife or the wilderness, a theme that has been an obsession for years now, with some evolution in what that entails but maintaining throughout the basic theme that the best life is a life lived off the land. It all started with apple picking and his inexplicably young preoccupation with persistence hunting in the Kalahari desert (which can be dated to before this post, from Ben's blog). Since then, it has grown to include all bow and arrow hunting, trapping, gardening, wilderness survival, building forts, eating large pieces of meat (preferably ones that look like the animal they came from), and of course that hardy constant, anything that has to do with fishing--talking about fishing, eating fish, gutting fish, reading fishing books, shopping for fishing tackle, watching other people fish, talking with fisherman (an instance in which language barriers prove surprisingly porous), planning, planning, and more planning to go fishing, and sometimes even really going fishing.

It would be an understatement to say Aaron is not crazy about posing for pictures, except when it comes to something he is excited about, which is very often animal-related. Here are a few of the related pictures he happily let us take over the past year.

A butcher's shop in the Old City of Jerusalem

Displaying a choice piece of tackle--apparently a pair of gray squids--from Capitol Fishing in NYC

Strawberry picking in Connecticut

Chowing down on a favorite feast--in this case, RIBS--at Grandma Karen and Grandpa LeeR's place in Utah. In preparing for the meal, he must have told grandpa ten times to be careful not to burn the ribs, describing in detail how one can tell they are done so that no mistakes were made.

Can you feel the excitement? Note the location of the rib serving plate.

Trying to spear fish some trout in our friend's backyard lake. Aaron asked the owner if he could try to catch some fish and the man said, "Well, I don't think that's a good idea." Aaron looked at him and said, in all earnestness, "So... can I or not?" We all laughed, but Aaron really did not understand what was so funny. Harry looked at him and said, "No. Well, actually, go ahead. Knock yourself out." So Aaron stripped down, found a sharp stick, and went at it.

A successful boat fishing trip--rare both for its success and its advanced fishing technology (you know, boats, bait, and people who know what they are doing)--in Utah last summer. Aaron looked forward to this trip for months and was not disappointed.

Along those lines, food is very important to Aaron. He loves to cook, and has gotten to the point where he can cook delicious food entirely by himself. Some things he has prepared on his own include roasted chicken, whole fish, an apple pie, pancakes, scrambled eggs, french toast, cookies, and others. This is not to say that each of these dishes were perfect--for lunch today Aaron prepared what he thought was cream of wheat by boiling sesame seeds. Nonetheless, some of his meals turn out very fine. He often prefers to make his own version of whatever I am making instead of helping me cook. Sometimes he gets so passionate about how things should be done that I have to excuse him from the kitchen so that I can finish the cooking. Of all the steps in food preparation, one of his favorite is to plan a feast shared with friends. Aaron is not a generally excitable kid, but when it comes to delicious food, he is as likely to hyperventilate as much--or almost as much--as when it comes to fishing.

Making a small castle cake for Elliot's birthday

Excited about the hugeness of the first batch of affordable strawberries in Israel

I can imagine a picture of Aaron making cookies with his Grandma Marsha last summer in Iowa, but I can't seem to find it. Imagine it here though, and if we find one, we will add it in.

Aaron's passion for eating animals has recently metamorphosed into the possibility of keeping animals not only as game and stock but also as pets, as beings whose purpose is to live and be loved, not to die. It is a heartening change. At the moment he is angling (sorry but true!) for, among others, a kitten, a hamster, a gerbil, and a rabbit, but would probably settle for anything. We have come close to getting him each of these, but decided against it since, among other reasons, we wouldn't know what to do with them when we move. So instead of having his own, he has become attached to other people's pets, especially our friends' cats, Monster and Milo (pictures forthcoming).

Holding my sister Kelcie's dog Dexter, last summer in Utah

Aaron tells us that he would like to run a marathon one day, and gets excited about the prospect of being able to go on runs with me. When we lived in NYC, he would often run around the block with me a few times, asking about whether or not I thought he would be ready for a marathon when he is fifteen. He also wants to do triathlons, but, like his Dad and other reasonable non-amphibian people, has a hard time imagining swimming for that long.

Aaron after the "Run for Haiti" in Central Park

Happy 7th Birthday, Aaron! We love you so much!

___________________________________________________________

Personal Interest Survey with Aaron, conducted in October 2010

[Aaron's responses verbatim]

Name: Aaron

Favorite Color: Turquoise

Favorite Food: Corn on the cob and juicy ribs

Favorite thing to do: Fishing

Favorite thing to do in Jerusalem: Hoping to catch lizards

Favorite thing done in Israel: Catching a crab

Favorite song: Random songs, songs I make up

Favorite movie: Swiss Family Robinson

Favorite book: My two fishing encyclopedias and Hatchet, or all the Brian books

What do you miss most about living in the United States? Fishing, chasing deer, and the library on the next block in New York.

Favorite thing to do with Mom: Go on bike rides

Favorite thing to do with Tato: Adventure in mountain

Favorite thing to do with Elliot: Watergun fights

Favorite thing to do with Libbie: When she punches me in the face at 5 am in the morning, tells me secrets and snuggles

What does Tato do? Write

What does Mama do? Play with kids

What do you want to be when you grow up? A fisherman, live in a cabin in the woods, a hunter without guns, and a newspaper delivery boy (for money)

What are some of your goals? To live by the ocean, to be able to go fishing a lot, and to catch a bluefin tuna.

(Aaron's question to himself) What is the biggest fish you are going to catch? A bluefin tuna, 108 pounds

St. Peter's Fish

The first week we were here, we went to the main outdoor market in the city center. The market is filled with all kinds of delicious food. I was thrilled to find buckets of grains and dried beans, tons of fresh produce, and warm pita. Of course, Aaron went straight for the fresh fish stands and we went home with a whole fish for him to cook up for dinner. We decided to try the local "St. Peter's fish."

(Notice the potato in its mouth)

Aaron fixed it completely by himself

Super enthusiastic about spicing the fish

(It was really good, by the way, and everybody chowed down.)

Our Aaron

I never wrote a post to honor Aaron on his birthday last November, so I will write a few words about him now.

Aaron is a careful thinker, whether coming up with "jokes" or trying to convince us of something. He is reasonable beyond expectations, trying hard to understand when things don't go his way, and makes an effort to not demand things at inconvenient times.

He is quite the entrepreneur, attempting right now to save money to buy a fishing boat. He has a separate container for boat money, and jumps at opportunities to earn more. When I went to Aaron's Parent-Teacher Conference, his teacher chuckled when she saw me and said something along the lines of, "My goodness, that Aaron! I'm telling you, he is going to be the CEO someday! He wrote me a note one day that said, 'Ms. Perez, Marco and I need to talk to you in private.' So I pulled them into the hallway while the other kids were working independently, and he told me that they are saving up for a boat and wondered if I could ask the other children to bring in old toys and things they don't use anymore so he could sell them." She thought it was the funniest thing. Pretty funny, but she's not the one who would have to deal with everybody's junk! Anyway, Aaron has been selling a few of his toys on craigslist, doing odd jobs around the house, and saving it all up for that fishing boat. One day he was getting so frustrated that he was still so far from his goal and so we sat down and talked about the idea of long term goals, and that most people in the world do not have enough extra money to buy a boat but if he saved for several years, he might be able to get one. He was upset at first, but by the end of the conversation he really got it. He is focused on the long term. This kid has serious patience.

Aaron loves to read and especially be read to. Reading has been his most reliable source of comfort. When he had an ear infection and would wake up in the night in pain, the only thing that worked to calm him down and ease the pain was to read to him. When he was in the hospital and getting poked and prodded, he would be fine as long as I was right next to him reading. There were even times when I would get distracted by looking at the needles in his arm or listening to the nurses next to him and he would desperately yell out, "READ! READ!" Now as he is reading better on his own, he will often sit down and read to himself for long periods of time. But what impresses me the most is that I don't think he has ever requested we not read a specific text to him when reading in bed at night. Sometimes we will pull out Habermas, or Dostoyevsky, or some text on Cybernetics, and he will lie there and listen. I am by no means saying that he understands everything we read to him, but that, to me, is much less important than having the patience to listen and try to understand.

I think it's telling that Aaron pulled out several of his loose teeth all by himself, just reached in and yanked them out when asked to.

Aaron continues to explore the culinary arts. He is fairly good at following recipes, but still loves to make his own creations. He tries to be careful with what he combines in order to avoid creating inedibles. Some of his favorite things to make are cakes, scrambled eggs filled with chopped veggies, pizza, and zucchini rounds with shredded parmesan cheese.

When Aaron makes mistakes, he is always willing to talk them through with us as we analyze what went wrong, why it was wrong, and how he can prevent it in the future.

He still loves fishing, of course, and no week would be complete without a good, long study of his extensive tackle collection.

Aaron continues to be interested and interesting. The other day he said to me, "Can you believe that when you and Tato got married you didn't even know that soon you would have a little boy named Aaron?" It is pretty hard to believe.

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007


2008


2009

2010

Nightmare

Aaron crawled into our bed the other night and later explained, "I had a dream there was a dead man knocking at the door."

Geez louise, a dead man knocking at the door? Whatever happened to the boogey man? He seems a lot easier to explain away than a dead man knocking at the door.

Happy 4th Birthday, Aaron!

Since Aaron's favorite thing to do is pack and play with suitcases, for his cake this year I made a luggage set. He was pretty excited.

Happy Birthday to Aaron!

Aaron made a "big suitcase" all by himself, which we put the candle in. Those are pretty impressive suitcases, wouldn't you say?

Aaron refused to get in a picture with his friends, but here, at least, are some of his friends from the birthday party. He was really funny this year-- he insisted on inviting only girls to his party. He said he just wanted to have a bunch of princesses. He did allow the girls to bring their little brothers though, so that's why Shem came. I had issues with selective invites at first but we decided that if he wanted his fourth birthday party to be girls only (plus little bros), that's alright. We had a small, mock party for the boys during the week.

Sneaky Boy

Aaron has become a sneak in two ways: the first, cutest, and funniest way is that he creeps up on us (complete with slight "tchh tchh" sound effect) to tickle us.

The second, which honestly (at this point) is almost as cute, but a little more disturbing, is that he is sneaky with trying to do things he knows he's not supposed to. He'll show me out of the kitchen and tell me to sit on the couch so he can get something he's not supposed to out of the fridge. He doesn't quite have the incognito thing down yet but he's got the idea of sneakiness at least. He'll also do little things like push my head in the other direction so I can't see him while he does what he's not supposed to.

Sneaky in whatever way, he sure is cute!