I finished reading Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist in the morning and did some work and typing.
He was up at 7:40. Came out, then went back in with Carly for awhile. He came out, and perched on the back of the couch next to Cherie. I went and took a shower. Derek made eggs and he had that and some toast for breakfast. He’s been having a lot of math discussions with Thatcher: from discussions of googleplex and infinity to Thatcher asking addition problems and then them debating the right answer until they figure it out.
He played with the robot, and we all planned a visit to Steve and Claremay in Centralia, the details of the negotiations underscoring the complexity of negotiating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
I moved August’s car seat into Cherie’s car, between Vivian and Colin. Carly and I felt like cave divers in Thailand getting into the back of the car, and Cassie and Jeff drove/navigated. August played some Monster Physics and Crazy Gears on his iPad.
We got to the house in Centralia at 12:10. Ran in and to the licorice candies. But August didn’t eat any. He’s already tired of them. Downstairs he found peppermint candies but I put them up on the shelf, leading to a couple timeouts when he couldn’t handle that. I had told him he needed to wait until after lunch.
He settled down and played with Colin in the toy room. He and Thatcher then made a laser shooter out of Duplos, and emerged and were shooting it around the house. They had some lunch. We had made fake chicken burgers and Claremay had made applesauce, which August called “Candy applesauce”. Thatcher said, “I said the F word.” But it was “Oh my gosh” that he had said, so he meant the G word. Thatcher and August had some more math conversations today.
We then went back downstairs and were playing there when one of the kids spotted a big insect on the sliding door, outside. Thatcher ran around to the other side. We figured out it was the a banded alder borer beetle https://www.insectidentification.org/insect-description.asp?identification=Banded-Alder-Borer-Beetle. They are attracted to fresh paint, and the house was just painted last week. We went outside after that one flew off and realized there were others. Saw about six total.
August ended up in the play area again with Jeff and Colin. He made the train track and sang “I need a train, so I’m making train tracks.” Colin was baking cookies and dinner and sharing those, but then was playing with 4 metal cars. August was pretending to wash them with a nozzle but Colin didn’t want to share them.
Near the end we went outside to see the beetle that thatcher had caught. He and Vivian named it ZZ as they had been calling it a zebra bug. We started cleaning up the play room, but then August had to use the bathroom, then had a timeout. He was then upset when he didn’t really get to clean up.
We went outside and they let ZZ go, watching the insect fly away. Vivian really wanted to walk the paths close to Chuck and Cherie’s old house (we had driven by the house on the way in – looks the same, except for the RV spot growing over with weeds). Cassie agreed. Colin fell asleep before we got there, so Jeff stayed with him.
The rest of us walked down, stopping to get a few blackberries. We got down to the pond and they threw some rocks in. August couldn’t handle just one at a time and got upset. On the way back up we saw a lot more of the blackberry bushes and had a lot of blackberries.
Colin woke up as we left at 3:45. We tried to keep things quiet so he might fall back to sleep, but he didn’t. I gave August the iPad to do some art. And Carly was doing quiet cookies with the other two to keep them quiet.
Carly passed forward the fry things and Cheerios to August. He did a good job of sharing them Vivian. And tried with Colin. He handed back the Cheerios and said “Colin is not responding to Cheerios.” Colin was getting more upset as we got close. I calmed him for awhile by putting my hand up by him. He was pulling my finger and I would make animal noises. August asked “When we get home can we say potty words in Oma’s closet?” We were back by 5:15.
He went downstairs to do art with Andrea and the other kids and they watched some show. They came up and he started to melt down. Carly took him in and he fell asleep at 7. Carly and Chuck went to play tennis. I got ready for bed and was falling asleep next to him when he woke up at 8:30. He just popped up, as if from a nap. Went out and they were watching the Curious George movie. He was instantly hooked, and said it was funny. They had made some popcorn earlier (Carly had done it before she left) and he ate some now.
We took him in about 10 and they read some of the Hilde book. He was repeating “Cardboard, glasses, and cranky.” And said those were cat names. He was asleep at 10:50.