Happy Birthday Andrew!

Always the watcher, the dreamer, the thinker. Sometimes we'd wonder if he was normal, because he sat and watched and thought so much in those first years. It turns out he was just figuring things out, building the systems, before he acted. No learning by trial and error for this boy.

From a conversation as he put his gum boots on to leave for kindergarten when he was five:

Andrew: "How many minutes before the bus comes?"
Me: "About four."
Andrew: "That's 240 seconds."
Me: "Andrew! How did you know that?"
Andrew: "Well, I know that two minutes is 120 seconds, and 2+2=4, 100+100=200, and 20+20=40."

Yep, always working to understand the systems. This meant no mechanical toy lasted more than a couple of days with him. He couldn't help but take a hammer and screwdriver to it to find out how its insides worked.

When he was in grade two, my husband scavenged an old chainsaw at the dump for him to take apart. He spent hours in the basement with that chainsaw, taking it apart and putting it back together. His journal from grade two reads something like this on almost every page:

I went to the dump with my dad. It was really really fun. I got a chainsaw. I am so happy. I have my very own chainsaw. I love my chainsaw. It is really really really really neat.

Much better, he was, at understanding the systems than creative writing.

Happy Golden Birthday, Andrew.
Twenty six on the twenty-sixth.