A Boy and His Blog

Posts Tagged ‘robots’

A few weeks ago, we took Owen to The Works Museum.  This isn’t too large of a museum and is housed within a community center.  The Works Museum’s website states: “The Works is a “hands-on, minds-on” museum that makes learning about engineering, science and technology interesting, understandable and fun.”  Owen has had a passion for engineering and science since he was about 18 months old.  Owen’s recent passion of course is robots, and the museum had a special exhibit going on about robotics.  We even got in free because the event was open up to the public.

As soon as we got into the area of the museum that had the robotics, Owen was super excited about what was going on.  He walked up to the displays all by himself and was not very concerned about us holding his hand or standing right next to him like he usually is in new situations.  He would approach the exhibits and start trying to work them all by himself.  He really enjoyed the displays and as the day progressed he got more and more bold and even started leading us around the museum to new exhibits.

At one exhibit Owen got to control a robot by himself.  He drove it around and around and was really enjoying himself.  The robot then crashed into him but he didn’t let go of the controls so he was a little confused for a moment there until we stopped the robot.  Owen led us around to several other exhibits and was able to try many things at the museum.  He saw a lot of robots and other engineering and science things that he also loved.

Going to this museum made me realize that Owen is very inclined towards robotics, engineering, and science.  I was very happy to see him acting like a completely different child in this environment.  He was completely at ease and excited, not at all shy or affected the by crowd like he usually is.  He seemed to have a lot of self confidence and natural curiosity in this situation and I hope to find ways to continue to encourage this in him.

The other day Owen and I were driving in the car. He suddenly yelled something really loud. I said “Owen! You scared the bejesus out of me!” He then said, “Mama, you scared the Jehovah out of me!”  He seems to think that one can’t say the word “Jesus” without also saying the word “Jehovah”.

Owen has some funny phrases he says lately.  Like he always asks, “what do you think?”  He says this when something is a bit peculiar and he wants to know what we think of it.  He also says, “what do you think of this?” or “how do you like that?” if he is doing something funny or strange that he wants us to take notice of.  He likes to hide now too.  He hides under blankets or he just hides his own face or head under a pillow or in the couch when one of us is coming home.  If taken off guard he will simply close his own eyes and he thinks this is hiding.  He then jumps up and says “ta da!”  He is also saying “I know” when we try telling him something.  He says it in an exasperated way like he is a teenager who thinks his parents are idiots.  Like we will say, “Owen, look, you pour this into here like this…” and he will interrupt “I know”.  He says this a lot these days.

Owen is growing very independent.  He is liking to do a lot of things for himself.  He will say, “I can do it” or “I do it!”.  He wants to cut his own food up, and zip his coat up, and do pretty much anything that he can on his own.  I think this is a bit of a delayed thing, because this is generally associated with the 2’s, but we are happy to see him wanting to do things for himself.

Owen is going through an angry phase.  He gets very scowly looks on his face and snaps at us a lot.  Sometimes he can’t seem to ask for anything without being mean about it.  I don’t think he is unhappy or angry, I think he is just having fun displaying this new emotion, so he is doing it all the time.

He is also happy every now and then too.  He likes to dance and sing now, but it is a very strange variation of what you would traditionally think of as singing and dancing.  I don’t even think I can quite explain it, but his dancing is just kind of bobbing up and down at the knees, and his singing is just him making some non-intelligeable noises in a sort of rhythmic way.  One day he even got up on his little table and was bobbing around and singing for me.  If he does actually attempt to sing a real song, it is just a very monotone shouting of the words.  I am really glad he has the confidence to try it finally though.

A couple days ago we had some friends over who had a one year old baby girl.  Owen had to be coaxed to play with her, and he would really only play beside her.  I didn’t know what he had thought of her since he rarely sees any babies anywhere.  That night while I was tucking him into bed I asked him if he liked the baby.  He said, “how about our next baby be that girl”.  I guess he liked her.  I explained that her parents wouldn’t like it we had her be our baby, so we should just have our own baby someday.  I guess he may be ready for a sibling soon.  Now if only Mama and Daddy were ready…

Lyric likes mermaids and Owen likes robots.  Owen is very confused over this strange thing.  He can’t wrap his mind around the fact that Lyric would like mermaids.  He says, “why Lyric like mermaids?” and “why Lyric not like robots?” and “who builds mermaids?”  He just can’t seem to understand that someone else could possibly like something different then what he likes.  He may be starting to grasp it because sometimes he says, “I like robots, and Lyric likes mermaids, what does Lucy like?”  We don’t know what Lucy likes, so I always tell him we’ll have to ask her.

Owen is really robot obsessed.  Day and in and day out, it’s nothing but robots, robots, robots.  He pretends he is a robot, he pretends we are robots, he talks about robots, thinks about robots, asks me why he is not a robot, asks me what is inside of robots bodies, etc.  One day he said to me, “why aren’t I a robot?”  I told him he was a person, and people grow in their Mama’s tummy’s and are born, and robots are made.  He said, “but how did I get in your tummy?”  I said, “well Mama and Daddy made you and put you in Mama’s tummy to grow and then when you got big enough you came out…”  He then got a scowl on his face and raised his voice and said, “well, why didn’t you make a robot!?”  I said, “well because, I didn’t want a robot, I wanted a baby!”  He yelled, “well I want a robot!”  I said, “well, you make a robot then!”  He got quiet and thought to himself for a minute and then he said, “I will make a robot, but Daddy has to help me because I don’t know all the pieces.”  He then went on and on about the robot him and Daddy will be making.

Daddy printed off lots of pictures of every robot he could find from TV and movies and we put them into plastic sleeves and taped them to his closet doors.  Every night now, we have to talk about the robots before he goes to bed.  He likes turning off his light and shining his night light on them and naming and talking about each one.  He knows even obscure robots, like we all know R2-D2 and C-3PO, but also from Star Wars he knows R4, R5, and TC-14 as well as pit droids and battle droids.  He knows pretty much every robot from every popular TV show or movie over the last 50 years or so.

When we ask him why he likes robots so much, he says, “because they clean up”.

Here are some photo’s of Owen and his robots:

This is the first picture of robots Owen had. I ripped it out of Entertainment Weekly and hung it on his closet door. I didn't realize the obsession it would spark.

This is how Owen's closet doors look now. Lots and lots of robots.

Here is Owen holding his robot, Tribot, and posing in front of all his robot pictures.

Posted by Daddy:

Owen has been especially fond of robots lately.  I’m not sure how this started, though I think it was a combination of a pop-up book of robots I began reading to him about 6 months ago, coupled with a theatrical viewing of WALL·E.  He also likes trucks, balls and books, too, but he’s really into robots – to the point that he has begun pretending to be certain robots.  This is significant, because Owen almost always deals in reality.  If he’s crawling around on the floor, and I say: “Are you a kitty?” he’ll answer, “No, I’m an Owen.”

His favorite robot, I’m pretty sure, is WALL·E.  He’s only seen the movie once, but he’s never forgotten about him, and he talks about WALL·E daily.  A few weeks ago, Entertainment Weekly dedicated a page to each of their favorite stars from 2008.  WALL·E, of course, received a page, and Jennifer tore that page out and taped it on Owen’s closet door.  But it turned out that Owen was more interested in the little snippets on the bottom of that page, where Entertainment Weekly briefly mentioned five other cinematic robots they were especially fond of.  Owen repeatedly asked me who each one was and how they walked.  (I think Owen is the only three-year old who knows that the robot in the film Metropolis was named Maria.)  He’s also asked to see footage of these robots, so I’ve had to scour the web looking for stuff to watch.

Yesterday, Owen’s robot pretending peaked.  He insisted that he was R2-D2 and I was Gunter.  He asked me how R2-D2 ‘walks’, and I stuck out my chest and hung my arms behind my back in the best R2 simulation I could come up with, and Owen decided to walk around the house like that all day.  I had to walk around like Gunter (from Lost in Space), then Gort (from The Day the Earth Stood Still), then the T-800 (from The Terminator).

We took a trip to the State Capitol yesterday, and, as the three of us were being escorted around the building on a guided tour, Owen continued to pretend he was R2-D2.  I think people kept looking at him thinking “What’s wrong with that poor kid?  His back must be in terrible shape!”  Even as we ascended and descended the grandiose marble staircases, Owen continued his pretending.  Of course, since it’s quite hazardous to walk bent over backwards on marble stairs, he asked me to hold one of his hands, and for Jennifer to hold his other hand.  This allowed him to bend back even more.

All evening, he referred to me as Gort, repeatedly requesting that I walk like a robot.  At night, I told him it was time to go to sleep, and he countered with: “Robots don’t get tired.”  I told him that robots do, however, need to recharge their batteries.