The Negotiator

You may be able to guess about whom I am speaking.  He will present his ideas, enforce them if possible, and negotiate at length to get what he wants.  (For the record, if said negotiation does not work or is not understood by younger playmates, rougher tactics may be used.  We are working on that.)  Indeed, he rarely stops talking - so much so that you have to laugh.  He is SO focused on how things should be; it really is quite amazing.  I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, but it had to be documented in some way.  I'll give you an example.

Today, we packed up for a little run around Kirkland with the boys' bikes.  There's a nice, flat paved trail that  wanders down to the main "beach" area by the lake.  Our goal was to give the boys are little ride and get a walk in ourselves.  Gavin, of course, had his own plan.  As we were leaving home, he began talking about making crafts.  With trash.  Then he proceeded to explain to us that the only reason to go to the beach was to find trash to bring home for making crafts.  We could bring it home, put it in the school room, and then make crafts.  (No, Gavin, we are not bringing trash home for crafts.)  Well, that's the only reason to go to the beach... We could go to the beach, find some trash, and bring it home for making crafts!

And on and on... all the way to the beach.  While we were at the beach.  And on the way home.  Luckily for us, Kirkland beach is pretty clean.  Not much trash to be found.  Phew.

He is incredibly sweet with all of his plans, and makes us smile in lots of other ways too.  For instance, Craig enjoys the fact that Gavin's starting to finish sentences with "Eh".  As in: "Crushety Crush will really like the new house we built for him, eh?"  He also says, "Zed."  (I tell him to at least say "Zee" here and "Zed" in Canada.  But so far I'm not winning this one.)

And one last example of his quirkiness, we got a page-a-day Dot-to-Dot calendar for Christmas.  Gavin loves this.  He does it everyday.  It is for adults, so the numbers go quite high... and he says, "Kachow!" every time he passes the number 95.  Can you figure out why?