Nicholas is my idiot-savant. He showed his teachers the savant part last week during a literacy assessment. Then, presumably, the idiot part during the motor-skills testing the next day.

We sat in on the literacy and skills testing. It’s fascinating to see the logic of little kid’s minds. It went like this.

Teacher: I’m going to give you a block, and you tell me what color it is. So, if I give you this block, you’d say…
Nicholas: Orange.
Test begins. Teacher gives Nicholas a yellow block.
Teacher: What color is this?
Nicholas grabs a red block.
Nicholas: This (red block) and this (yellow block) make orange.
Teacher: What color is that one?
Nicholas: They mix together and make orange.
Teacher: That’s correct.
Nicholas: They mix together.
Teacher: But what color is this one?
Nicholas: Yellow.

…

Teacher: For this one, I need my timer.
Nicholas points to a bin labeled “time.”
Nicholas: There’s time over there. It says time over there.

…

Teacher: For this one you have to watch closely…
Nicholas bugs out his eyes and moves his head around in circular motion. He’s “watching closely.”
(It was hilarious. It took everything not to laugh disruptingly loud.)

…

Teacher: Can you sing the ABCs?
Nicholas: Yes, I’m very good at it.
(He is. And distinctly said each letter: l, m, n, o, p. As a kid, I don’t how long I thought “elem-en-toe-pee” was a letter.)

After each activity, Nicholas clapped and leaned over to read what the teacher was writing on the score card. (I warned her he could read.) He didn’t do everything perfectly; scary if he did. He thought his knuckles were his shoulder or shin. He thought a picture of a shoe was a computer mouse, couldn’t put one block “between” two others, etc.

Then when it was over, he tried repeatedly to put his backpack on sideways. He whined, “Eeeeh!” every time he couldn’t get his arm in the sideways-backpack strap. That’s how I imagine thee entire motor-skills test went. A lot of “Eeeeh! Eeeeh! Eeeeh!”

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So I haven’t posted any of these in a while. As Jacob and Nicholas get older, it’s harder and harder to write down the ridiculous things they say (because they talk so fast).

Nicholas can read. He’s been reading since age 3.5. When I say this, I’m sure most people (like I would) assume he’s memorized some books, and so his “my kid is the smartest kid ever” parents think he can read. I tell you this: he can actually read. It still takes him 10 minutes to put on a pair of socks (getting much better at putting pants on now, frontwards no less), but hey. No disillusionment here; he can read. For reals. He’ll pick up a book he hasn’t seen before and read it. When he gets to a word he doesn’t know, he says, “What that says?” (I know. Grammar.)

Don’t know what level he reads on, but he does it almost as well as his kindergartner brother. I would love to get him tested. I’d also love to take some credit for it. But it was all Starfall and old school Electric Company. Point is: reading has unlock a whole new lot of dumb things Nicholas says.

On to the good stuff:

Nicholas: Shite words. Does that say shite words?
(Reading Jacob’s “sight words” list.)

Nicholas: Rate that tit-el.
(Reading “Rate that title” on Netflix.)

Nicholas: Does that say schnoz?
(Reading “snooze” on an alarm clock.)

He also calls Matt “Matt-new” because he a poorly printed piece of junk mail.

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Nicholas is a little punk. A bit of a smartass. (No idea where he gets that from.) In the car the other day:

Nicholas: A-b-c. E-f-g. A-b-c. E-f-g.
Me:(singing the ABC song): A, b, c, D, e, f, g…next time won’t you sing with me. Sing with me.
Nicholas: Kaa-shoo. Kaa-shoo. Kaa-shoo.

He’s bent over. His head is down. He’s pretending to be asleep.

Me: Are you pretending to be asleep so I’ll stop singing?
Nicholas: YES!

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Yesterday Nicholas started singing and rhyming words. (Yeah, you know where this is going.)

Nicholas: Chuck, chuck. F*@k, f*@k. Chuck, chuck. F*@k, f*@k.
Me: Nicholas, don’t say that. That’s a bad word.
Nicholas (very seriously): Chuck is NOT a bad word.

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