Wreak

Vincent always wants us to read to him these days. He brings us a book and says "Wreak! Wreak!" (He's not big on pronouncing D's. He calls his brother "Eckie".)

Then when I start to "wreak", he puts his hand over the page and says "stop!"

Eddie and Erdős

Today I read Eddie a picture book about Paul Erdős, The Boy Who Loved Math. (At one point he demanded "Did I pick this book?" and I had to admit that no, Papa picked this book.)

Near the end it mentions Erdős numbers and has a graph with pictures of people and their connections, with numbers one and two. Eddie said "I wish I had Erdős number one."

"Well, that's impossible now," I said, "because—"

"I mean, I wish I had Erdős number three!" he said.

"OK!" I said. "We can do that. If you write a paper with me someday, you'll have Erdős number three."

"Yeah!" he said. "We'll write a paper together."

After we finished the book, he was ready to start right away. "Let's write a paper, Papa."

So, we did.

So Eddie's Erdős number is 3.

On cheeks

During dinner, Eddie told Papa "You love me!"

"Yes," Papa agreed.

"And I have little cheeks!" Eddie continued.

"Huh?"

"My cheeks are little!"

Ozymandias

So Eddie is always asking me to tell him a story "about a human being." I have to really cudgel my brains to come up with something these days. So during dinner, when a story was demanded, I told him about Ozymandias, a king who had a huge statue of himself built, and wrote on the bottom "I am Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!" But then time went on, the desert overtook the land, the statue crumbled apart, yada yada, and just the pedestal was left.
Then when people saw it, they were like "What works? Pfft, Ozymandias was pretty silly."

Eddie didn't buy it. "Why were the words still there?" he asked.

"Just the pedestal was left", I said.

"If the whole statue crumbled away, why were the words still there?"

Well, that's a pretty good question, now that you mention it!

Eddie's pirate book

Eddie just wrote a pirate book.

"Eddie's Pirate Book." You can find all the letters if you look—it's like a treasure hunt!

Here we see lots of treasure, with a net to catch it. Pirate Eddie (with a skull and crossbones hat) and Pirate Papa will share the treasure.

Pirate Papa is in a boat on the waves, as Pirate Eddie stands by. On the right, up above, we see a chicken thinking about pecking. Then we have a man with thoughts in his brain. He is thinking about treasure.

Pronouncement

We were riding in the car, and Eddie had been quiet for some time. Suddenly he said "Pirates have green teeth!"

Um

Yesterday, Eddie got a goodie bag at his school's farewell picnic, including a ball, some stickers, a little notebook, and a pen. He's been having fun writing and drawing in the notebook. The teachers had a bag for Vincent too!

Today, Eddie was examining Vincent's bag, and noticed that it didn't include a pen. He asked why not.

"Pens are not for babies," I said.

"Why not?"

There seem to be many reasons, but I said "They're too sharp."

"Not if his big brother wants to kill him!" said Eddie.

Uh