Causation

On Friday (21.12.12), Jim mailed off half the holiday presents (I'm still packing the rest) and exams are all graded though not all grades posted as some more papers may be submitted, though paper-writing, and therefore paper-grading, have drastically changed courtesy of the internet. It was more of an exhausting, perhaps exhilarating, semester than usual not only because of extreme weather events but as all aspects of humanity came to the surface in my early morning Elementary Latin class in particular.

I was still proctoring an exam/enjoining students to f-o-c-u-s and finish writing about Herodotus' and Thucydides' views on causation and evidence when Charlie came home due to having a half-day. He has been extremely wary of getting on his bike after the brakes were fixed and a new axle installed on the rear wheel on Tuesday (he and I had to pick up the bike at the bike shop on Tuesday evening as Jim had an important meeting to attend and seeing the bike come out of the store instead of the shed probably weirded Charlie out). Wednesday there was a ride in twilight, Thursday Charlie preferred not too -- I think he could also feel that our latest storm Draco was due to hit -- and he kept giving me looks in the evening that (along with the word tickle which has come to mean 'go to a different level of the house for something) I divined meant I should get the swim bag.

Charlie's school swims about once every quarter, 3 times in a row. Only this time (maybe because of the hurricane?), they only swam twice and will have one more swim day in January. But Charlie knows they swim 3 weeks in a row so on Thursday he wanted, and did, put on his swimsuit and on Friday, with a fleece vest over his sweatshirt, he boarded the bus with the swimsuit on and his swim bag packed with a towel and long pants. Apparently there was not an issue about this at school as no mention of such was made. 

These past weeks, he's been showing some tiny bits of such order-ful awareness.

On a walk on Tuesday, Charlie bent over to toss a tree branch out of the path, instead of stepping on, over or around it.

Some nicely articulated two-word echolalic utterances have also been heard (so I've been informed 'bye sweetie').

Last weekend, too, Charlie kept looking at me after we had gotten back from a rainy ride and said 'purple' and looked at me: He wanted his daily dose of one of his stomach-comforting meds. 

Understanding cause and effect: Scientific thinking.