Plaid sperm

Mom says:  Ivan is currently in a plaid fashion frenzy. Dressing "his best" (e.g. for a wedding) means hunting through all his clothes for everything plaid, regardless of style or color. Best so far was red and brown and orange plaid pants, plus green plaid shirt, plus blue plaid hat, plus dark blue plaid tie. He is demanding plaid socks but I haven't found any yet. If the phase lasts another week or two, we're taking a trip to the fabric store.

We went camping.  Ivan was in the back seat, Dan driving.  We had a new fishing pole for Ivan, and had just bought bait.
"What kind of bait did you buy?" asked Dan.
"Salmon eggs"  said Ivan. "But there are no baby salmons in there because they don't have sperm."

(We went to the Exploratorium last week and Ivan enjoyed the genetics exhibit where you could use a touchscreen to combine two different-colored goldfish, and watch the graphic of one depositing sperm and the other depositing eggs, and then the baby fish would hatch.  I am awaiting the follow-up questions.)

Since Mom is very obsessed with the Mars rover Curiosity, the first giant six-wheeled Martian rock-vaporizing laser-shooting robot, Ivan has become pretty interested in space too.  He builds a lot of lego Mars rovers.