and the tired people smile

oh, said the teachers, his spelling is coming along nicely. I smiled at them. Yes, I knew that.

You could spell 'fiend,' the Eldest informed me. See? Put that there, and move that - and like, yes, that. There! I looked. Fiend.

Right, then.

So, I said slowly, tell me. If you could wish for anything that would be different, or that would change in your classroom, what would it be? The Eldest thought this over.

I'd want more math, he decided. And I want to do multiplication. I blinked at him, surprised. You are doing multiplication. He waved that off. And I want to have math homework. And have E stop punching my butt. I wrote all of this down, and presented it to the teachers for our parent-teacher meeting. Uniformly tired and amused, we grinned at each other.

Yes, said one teacher, I want E to stop punching my butt, too. And I wouldn't mind some help figuring out what to do with the kids playing square root games, either. She cocked an eyebrow at me, and I shrugged. I have no idea, I admitted. I think this one is his father's fault.

At home, the Toddles was chasing his own neural paths. I think, he mused, that Jupiter is more sensitive than its moon. And Jupiter's moon is, I think, lighter [has more light] than the sun. Maybe the Sun is in Jupiter's moon, and Jupiter's moon - he paused here, possibly for air - Jupiter has a baby. And I think - I think - I don't know.

I hugged the kid. I didn't know, either. We settled down with a book about spaceships and moons, and thought it over together.