Six

There's enough distance and time between Emma's ten and Mark's six that six seems novel and like uncharted terrain.

Maybe it's just Mark's version of six.

There are a lot of inconsistencies:

When Mark wants to do something he's too young for, he says, "Mom, I am six."

When he needs to do an unsavory task like clean his room, he says, "Mom, I am only six."

He never (no never) wants to have school.

When he is doing school work, he gets unsettled if he doesn't do every single part of every single page.

There's predictable stuff like enough questions to make me cross-eyed. Then there's the unpredictable stuff like the other night when Adam was telling a story. Mark said, "Who in this story has swine flu? Because it seems like someone is missing."

There's a lot of sighing deeply from me as I have yet another strong personality to deal with in our little school of strong personalities.

Today Mark was learning how to count by two. He figured it out then said, "The problem with this is when you count by two you have no way of knowing how many there are."

I explained that yes you do. I demonstrated by spilling some colored pencils on the table and counting them briskly by two. Then I had him count one by one. See? We got the same number.

He said, "Well it doesn't work for large numbers."

I spilled more pencils on the table. We counted them.

His next argument: "It doesn't work for people that don't know how to count by two."

I told him I wasn't worried about them. I was worried about him and he was smart and knew how to count by two.

He sighed. "Not everyone is smart."

I sighed more deeply.

It's what I do many many times a day.