There are currently eleven people sleeping under my roof. It is pretty much constant chaos completely representative of life in summer — trampolines and swimsuits and food and art projects and jumping on furniture and people and funny practical jokes and occasional tears until about 9 PM when the kids under 10 are in bed and the grown-ups break out the board games. Playing 7 Wonders has been a wonderful end to the day.
On the day before they came to town, Gabe finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with his dad, Jake (Day #33). It was Gabe’s favorite book in the canon.
We made a deal to watch the eighth movie together to celebrate the conclusion of reading the series. Gabe agreed to a game of catch after a conversation about the Harry Potter world.
Gabe is 8 and full of creative, imaginative energy. His favorite color is cyan and he’s developing his own language based on the color, Cyanese. It honestly sounds a bit like parseltongue, and Gabe is one of the only interpreters of the language. He’s a Gryffindor through and through and it’s always good to have another housemate nearby. He really wants to take Defense Against the Dark Arts. Just this week, we had a massive balloon fight in the house with the goal of trying to knock the heads off of zombies. Gabe fought with passion.
In the wizarding world, Gabe would like to be an auror. In the non-wizarding world, Gabe would like to be a YouTuber making Minecraft videos as well as other video games.
Typical for an 8-year old boy, Gabe would love to try candy from Honeydukes. “I tried the vomit every-flavor-jellybean once. It wasn’t too bad, but I did have to spit it out for a bit. I liked the toothpaste one, too. I didn’t eat the canned dog food, but dad did.”
Using his homemade wand, he confessed to using stupefy and expelliarmus on his siblings.
“One time, I thought it worked.”
Again, typical for an 8-year old boy with three sisters, his boggart would be pink and purple butterflies.
“One thing I’ve learned and what I really like is that good wins in the end.”
We went to the park to play catch and Gabe was full of smiles. He borrowed the glove I used when I was his age, a Mike Flanagan autographed model with a perfect pocket. Jake and Sophie joined in and we tossed the ball in a criss-cross pattern. We finished when Gabe made a great catch and I asked Gabe what he thought.
He replied in Cyanese so I had to ask for an interpretation.
“Well, basically what I said was, ‘That was epic.’”
