Of Babies, Birthdays, and Embracing Minecraft as a Special Interest

One of our friends gave birth to a beautiful baby girl yesterday! Singularity had followed Kristina's pregnancy with interest, and two days ago he got to feel the fetus moving. (Singularity always uses the correct terminology, in this case he learned that it's not a baby until it has been born from It's So Amazing.) Kristina hadn't given her fetus a nickname, so Singularity did: Grass Block! 

Grass Block??? How does Singularity come up with these things? Of course, he is a Minecraft aficionado. But why a grass block? I asked him why, but he said that he doesn't really know. But there is one special quality about a grass block in Minecraft: if you dig it up with an ordinary shovel, it becomes a dirt block, but if you dig it up with a tool that has the "silk touch" enchantment, it retains the form of the grass block. In other words, a grass block is something that needs special handling to be extracted intact. In a weird way, it's kind of like a baby being birthed. I'm not sure if this parallel was obvious to Singularity or not. 

Speaking of Minecraft, Singularity recently had his tenth birthday, and his birthday party was Minecraft-themed. Most of his gifts and almost all of the party food stayed on-theme.

We also dined on such Minecraft foods as chicken, pork chops, steak, bread, potatoes, and various potions (strength, swiftness, fire resistance, etc.). We also constructed a ghast pinata.

Can you tell that Minecraft is Singularity's current special interest? As usual my modus operandi is to embrace it and use it in a creative, rather than rote, way and as the vehicle for meaningful interpersonal connection. 

We are also using Minecraft as the medium for Singularity to do his school assignment of inventing a machine to transport frozen yogurt from a nearby shop to his school. Singularity didn't want to use Minecraft, because he thought that he would too easily become distracted and start building things with redstone (electrical circuits). (Yay, Singularity, for this stroke of self-awareness!) We solved the problem by having him guide me through creating it. We haven't gotten very far yet, as I'm not a skilled Minecraft player and terraforming is surprisingly time-consuming, but I'm sure that we will have some kind of working system in the end. Oh, and we will use lava to represent the frozen yogurt. 

Can you tell that I think that Minecraft is fun, too? I can very much relate to how easily a person can get sucked into playing it and be reluctant to stop when asked to.