This is Caleb Duane Cook-Kollars. Caleb is an old New England name, and also a biblical name, which we chose because it's not common. Duane is a family name. Caleb is the third generation to have Duane as a middle name.
Here's Caleb's own web presence.
He soon outgrew babyhood and was old enough to enjoy playing in the snow. Except there wasn't too much snow that winter. He was lured outside when spring came. Outside had a sandbox, trucks, swings and slides, growing plants, bugs, in general lots to entertain a little boy. Caleb attended Christ Church preschool for two years, the second year four mornings a week, then Paul F. Doyon Elementary, one of the schools in Ipswich. Now he's moved on to Ipswich Middle School, He often plays with his older sister, as well as with kids he knows from school.
He was interested in all kinds of building sets, including Lincoln Logs, Brio Mec, Giant Lego, Tinkertoys, K'nex, Zoobs, and Robotics. He's now focused on just K'nex. He's also interested in taking old broken things apart; for which he uses a hammer freely. He and I built a "robot" that moved under its own power (batteries) and was controlled remotely by radio buttons (garage door openers). He was quite interested in "board games," not just simple ones but also difficult ones like Go and Backgammon. He even had an interest in Chess. A few years back I thought Caleb was clearly too young to be playing Chess, until I helped monitor a chess tournament here in Ipswich for contestants under ten. There were quite a few entrants, and they played much better than I expected. Back then I got him a computer chess game, and set its play level as low as I could at the time (only 1-ply look ahead, no think ahead, and no use of an openings book). But Caleb still thought it was "too hard." Anything that never made a mistake was beyond him. We've since picked up the old row game packaged in a distinctive red tube Pente (a lot like Go-Moku), and he understands the game instinctively so well he frowns at silly play situations that I don't even recognize and beats me regularly.
In August 1999 he got a Pokemon cartridge for his GameBoy, which was the beginning of his being lost in Pokemon. In early December of that year he "beat the game" by capturing (all) 150 Pokemons. The game then started itself over. Next he figured out how to link GameBoys and play against other people or trade Pokemons (or clone one into two by cheating just right) and remained enchanted with it. Now he's moved up to a GameCube and "borrows" games either from friends or from the local store, still sometimes exploring games that have Pokemon characters. He's quite proficient at playing these video games, solving and responding to puzzles and situations much much quicker than I can even comprehend them.
He has the boundless interests and curiosity of a young boy, and sometimes wonders about things that seem beyond his years. A while ago he asked me what makes a magnet sticky. After my hand-wavy explanation about spins he asked "what does it mean to have the spins line up?"
He is learning to play the saxophone, likes it very much, and doesn't complain about carrying the large heavy instrument as he did at first. He is especially fond of jazz and sometimes participates in the jazz band at his school. When his older sister Jennie added the oboe last year, he also picked up on the oboe (using a separate reed). He says it was fairly easy as the fingerings are quite similar to the saxophone, but I'm amazed at how musically he plays the difficult double reed instrument with only very minimal guidance.
One of his current interests is "dart guns," the other is RC (radio controlled) vehicles. Thank goodness for recharcheable batteries. He uses a tiny Zip-Zap, and a larger truck that does wheelies (and jackknifes). He also has one of the Twisters, but doesn't use it so much because it's too hard to control (the front wheels flip over instead of turning). That's probably why the demo had the cars running in a sort of corral rather than completely free. In the corral, every edge was a potential backflip or twist or ricochet.
He's part of the Kollars family.
Here's another picture.
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Location: N42 40.86' W070 50.35'
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