Carly woke him up just before 8. The first thing he talked about was the “alien cards”: the card game from Korea. They’re actually monster cards. He informed her that monsters and aliens are the same thing, but aliens live in outer space. He came downstairs, asking for the Pink Panther. We read some Ramona Quimby, then he helped Carly paint the corner unit in the front hallway. They’re painting it a nice blue color. I skyped with my parents while they did that, and August came over. Paul had just arrived back from his trip to hike Mt. Adams and had to work in the morning, so didn’t talk to him. But he had been gone a week. My parents had gone to a Jag car show in Spokane, then stayed at a restore in Idaho called Stoneridge and driven up to the northeast corner of the state to Metaline Falls on the Pend Oreille River. None of us have really been up to that corner of the state before and I’d like to see it sometime. August typed to them and did symbols using the ‘Option’ key and numbers in Arabic.
He then played Quick Math Jr. and I took a shower. Carly did some rearranging, putting one of the green drawer things from Korea downstairs to hold August’s toys down there. Carly then helped me start to do more of the moving upstairs. The small desk is back out on the patio, out of the way. The big dresser took its place in the bedroom so there is actually a dresser in there. Eventually the small grey couch will come out to the play area and the big desk will move in the small room to be the office.
They left at 11:25. I made lunch and did some work. They were back at 12:10. They had just gone to the toy store by the train station. They had gotten paint to paint his big box/rocket, a swim noodle that “shoots bubble gum jam”, and some glue for something.
They worked on painting his box. Carly had done laundry, and we put the blue shirt that Atsuko had given him when he was a year old on him. It finally fits. They left again. They went to Tiv Taam. He did an arm time machine where he spins his arm around like he does when he runs and he went to different time periods: “before humans…just molecules…the big boom.” The last being his moniker for the Big Bang. We haven’t discussed different time periods recently, so not sure where that came from. But not totally surprising. They also went to the crafts store in the mall and got more paint for the corner unit.
They were back at 3. He did more painting with Carly. He then did more exercising with my watch. He decided to run around in circles on the rug for 5 minutes, but he slipped and fell. He didn’t cry out or anything, but ignored me when I came over. He did some self-soothing, and just lay on the floor by himself for upwards of ten minutes. When he got up he came over to me on in the kitchen and said “Dada, close your eyes.” He took me to the couch and buried me in pillows. And he said “I think I love you.” He then did more balloon machine. I roasted the sweet potatoes to make purée for the bread we were going to make later. And I made a mango smoothie for us all.
Carly was working outside. She keeps stepping up the landscaping, especially in the planters around the kitchen. He helped me make the maple sweet potato bread, then made scary monsters out of the monster cards on the couch. Carly came in and they played with the straw building things. She made a long snake sort of thing that he would blow in and other things would come out of it. Later it would produce chairs and stools for us in the thousands.
He wanted to do more exercise with my watch. He went outside and was running around got the 30 minutes of exercise. He really wanted to get the calorie goal as well. He slid down the slide on his stomach, backwards, then got the hose and washed off the slide as it was dirty. He came in and ate some of the bread fresh out of the oven, then Carly had him watch a video on the different colors of poop. I’m not sure what started that, although I think it had something to do with the dual definitions of ‘stool’.
He and I went out walking again at 6:50. We saw cat #28 on our way up. He also stopped to look at a big, shiny, new BMW motorcycle and asked questions about it. He said he has a cat sensing power. I said I didn’t have that ability, but maybe I just needed to practice sensing cats. He said, “I have a machine that does it and you have a power. So we just need to upgrade your power.”
He had been using my watch so much today that it was down to a few percent and wasn’t going to last through the walk. He took it off and gave it to me so he wouldn’t have to see that happen. He wanted the snakes and ladders playground again. There, we played the spaceship game. And he was singing a spaceship song.
We went on the spinning thing and that was his spinning time machine. “I have my arm machine and this one.” He spun around, just relaxing in it. Started singing his counting song: “And a one and a two…” He told me, of this song, “Remember that song I sang this summer and it went to a thousand? I updated it and it goes to a million now. Can you help me singing it?” But then he started talking about which time period he was in: “We’re in the ape one now.”
We left at 7:30 and got home by 7:50. I hadn’t mentioned it recently, but he suddenly said “We need a word of the day!” We reviewed the words from Ramona Quimby, Age 8 that we had discussed in the morning (brooded, indignant, arthritic) and chose ‘brooded’.
When he wanted his water he said “You’re a stray. Could you get my water bottle please, stray cat?” Carly made him noddles and mushrooms for dinner. We read more Ramona. He repeated some of his favorite lines from it. As we went upstairs he called Carly Bigfoot. Carly commented on Ramona being a bad influence too.
We started his bath at 8:20. I washed his hair and he did a little art on the door. We used the hair dryer on his hair and since he hadn’t had his 20 minutes of iPad after dinner we negotiated one pink panther Pink Pink Pink Pink episode. He watched that and had more bread. He initially ran to Carly and wanted her, but I said he was going to bed with me again and he was fine with that. He said goodnight to her and we went upstairs and brushed his teeth. We were in bed with lights off and singing to him before 9:15. He was asleep at 9:25.
Shirt that Atsuko bought him when he was a baby:
