Numbers are good for lots of occasions. And the calculations are getting more precise over time.

This morning, Daniel called, from the bathroom, to me in the kitchen:

Daddy, three and three are six, and six and six are ten!"

I went in so we could discuss this dual proposition. Then he asked me what ten plus ten are. I urged him to arrive at the sum on his own. The fingers came out, with a bit of counting-out-loud. 20. I was very happy.

Sometime in the last couple of weeks, when Daniel was counting 196, 197, 198, 199, there was a long pause, followed by one-hundred-and-one-hundred. But he got past that one as well.

I sometimes let the boys take a "break," as they call it, during church, since the Liturgy lasts almost two hours and Ian and I (and sometimes Daniel) are usually there from the beginning. During Daniel's break a couple of wees ago, he sat quietly in a chair at a table in the church hall. Not much to do, when you're the only truant in the church hall. Then he came back into church and whispered to me, "I counted up to one hundred and twenty." That's certainly something to do when you're not doing anything else, much the way I used to try to see if I could list all fifteen [former-]Soviet "republics" in the dentist's chair - an even more captive, nothing-to-due venue.

Some famous physicist - I forget which one - once said he wasn't very interested in politics, because politics is always changing, whereas formulas are "eternal" [as if...]. But certainly mathematical data can get trotted out when there's nothing else, particularly compelling, going on.

(December 17, 2011)