33

There have been various birthdays that have meant particular milestones for me. 8 years old, of course. Then 14 when I was as old as Joseph Smith when he had his first vision. Then 23 when I was officially older than most missionaries, boys or girls. Before then, missionaries had always been older and more mature than I. Now I'm 33, the same age of Jesus when he was crucified. Is it blasphemous to compare myself to Jesus? Anyway, it's what I'm thinking about. I haven't accomplished quite as much in my life as he had by my age. :-)
Also, I'm 2 years from being officially halfway through my 30's which is just plain weird. I guess I don't exactly identify with 20-somethings anymore, but I definitely don't feel like I always perceived people in their 30's. But I guess that's how everyone in their 30's feels. And 40's and 50's, etc., etc. Everyone ages for the first time (and only time), so I guess aging feels just as surprising to everyone else as it does for me.
Anyway, I'm glad to be turning 33. It will be better than 32. And it puts another year between me and 31, which was distinctly NOT a good year for me. Well, it was good, but I'm also very happy to be putting more and more distance between me and it.
Sunday was a good day, although it started out not so good for poor Brigham. He was up first, as he usually is, and was up and dressed in his suit and was combing his hair by the time I finally dragged myself up to turn off the alarm. He told me he wasn't feeling good, but that maybe he was just hungry. I got ready for church, and by the time I came back into my bedroom, he was laying on the bed looking a little miserable. He said his legs felt "heavy." Ben and the boys took a long and hard bike ride last night, so I thought maybe he was sore from his bike ride.
But on the way to church, he said he felt like he was going to throw up. We went into church and sat on the couch in the foyer for the sacrament, Brigham looking white as a sheet. Sure enough he did throw up (we had brought a plastic bag in from the car just in case).
I took him home since Ben has to play the piano in primary. He felt much better, and wanted to stay for Primary (he's such a good boy), but I told him he needed to go home in case he was still sick. We went home and watched "On the Lord's Errand" (I think), the DVD about Thomas S. Monson, and it was really a joy to lay next to him on the bed and hold his hand and watch the movie with him. He is such a good boy. The descriptions of Thomas Monson as a kid reminded me of Brigham. Is that blasphemous, to compare my son to the Prophet? :-)
Anyway, I also had the pleasure of talking to him uninterrupted, which doesn't happen often enough for any of my boys. He's been extremely curious about a few topics lately, especially radios (how does an electromagnetic radio wave actually end up as sound coming out of a radio? I confess, I don't have a very clear idea myself), and energy (how is electricity generated? What is fusion?). He knows about how electricity is generated when a magnet spins around inside a coil of wire, and he's been fixated on how to make this happen without exerting any mechanical force on the magnet itself. I guess like a perpetual motion machine. Anyway, he was trying to explain his idea and I couldn't quite follow him, so he drew me a diagram, and I thought his idea was pretty ingenious, although it does violate the law of conservation of energy, so I don't think it would work. His idea is to put a bunch of magnets in a gear, and then place other magnets around it, so that the magnetic repulsion between like poles would drive the gear around and around. This would spin the magnet inside the solenoid and generate electricity.
I have a feeling that this set up wouldn't work, for the simple reason that if it did, someone would have done it already. But I couldn't explain to him theoretically why it would not work. Can someone smarter than me do it? I told him we'd have to build a model of what he was talking about to see if we could get it to work.
Still, it was a conversation that thrilled me as a mom. How awesome is it to be conversing with my son about magnets and solenoids, and the laws of physics and electricity, and have him be coming up with ideas and questions all on his own that have me stumped? Pretty awesome.