Leópold

Leo is my most welcome distraction from productivity. He’s my youngest son and he makes people happy with his presence. It’s hard for me not to look up from my laptop with a smile after about 45 rapid-fire questions about Dyson spheres and nuclear fusion… Things that I scramble to google for, while he’s asking me, because Dads are supposed to know everything, right?

He has always been this way. A part of what makes him so special is that he takes pleasure in the most unexpected things, while shrugging off others that other people usually like. He doesn’t really like movies or TV, but he can sit through hours of audiobooks. He has always become quickly bored with fancy toys but will seek out bottle caps and rare coins. He hates eating out at restaurants but will happily play in a water pool for 4 hours.

He is unfortunetly hooked on Fortnight like every other 10 year old, and for a while was developing terrible posture, slouching over his controller on the couch. His mom got him a yoga ball and he instantly started sitting on it with perfect posture while playing on his Xbox. In between rounds he inadvertently does core exercises by balancing and planking in strange positions, on the ball.

Leo picked up chess quickly when I taught him, but it bores him. He humors me sometimes and agrees to a game, but often modifies the rules to make the game more exciting to him. The version pictured above is called Zombie Chess. It’s actually really fun. When a piece is captured, the piece that made the capture leaves behind a zombie version of the piece that he just captured, in its own colour. The Zombie piece’s only limitation is, that when it is captured, it does not leave behind another zombie piece. Leo came up with that all on his own!

In an effort to make oatmeal more exciting I started making it taste sweeter. I taught Leo the recipe the other day; oats, milk (instead of water), sugar, bananas and peanut butter. He used to like it before he saw how unhealthy the ingredients are. He now says that he prefers the “healthy kind”.

Another thing that makes Leo so special is his interest in others. He genuinely likes to hear your story if you sit down with him and talk to him like a person, and not a kid. But be careful. He will remember everything that you casually tell him about your work politics, embarrassing stories from your own childhood, or trivial facts about sleep-walking.