Saturday, October 6: playing at our playground

He came down at 7:20, went right for his shoes, and went outside with Carly. I heard them talking about putting up some sort of sign, and Carly looked up sunrise and sunset times. They came in and sat on the couch. August explained that he would sit in the middle and I’d sit on one side of him and mama would sit on the other side. “You’re a bum bum…that’s a way of saying you’re really nice.” Carly explained what ‘bum’ meant and he sang ‘Word of the day!” He asked her, “Will you like me when I’m seventeen?” He was still stuffy, but refused to blow his nose.

Carly went outside and he watched Llama Llama. She had made chocolate milk for him. I got vitamins and Cheerios. He stopped watching and had his milk and food, then was asking me what a tornado looked like. We watched videos of tornados and hurricanes, with me turning down the volume when people started swearing. He had me be someone taking a field trip up into the clouds when it got really windy. He then watched the latest Marble Machine X construction video (#53, I think), and then he was the Marble Machine, with me playing him.

He went outside with Carly. They discovered a big mushroom by the stump behind the Zinnie House and August came in and got me to show me. He also got the hammer to try to hammer it out. I went out and watched, but it proved to be a tough little mushroom and he gave up on destroying it. I made scrambled eggs with olives. He didn’t eat much, and heard me mention that they were a little watery. He said that was why he didn’t like them. Carly cooked them more and he ate a bit more of them.

We then read a few chapters of Hilo 3. I then went up and took a shower. He was watching The Pink Panther when I came back down. Carly made a mango smoothie. He got whiney about how long it was taking and she stopped until he was nice to her again. We read more of Hilo, through chapter 6, then went upstairs and played the pretending game on the bed. We continued the thread from yesterday, with the kids visiting him again. He did tricks on the bed and we did some slo-mo and time lapse videos of that.

He asked what the smallest distance was, and we talked about micrometers/microns and made that a word of the day. He used the bathroom, then went downstairs for a bathroom treat. He watched Kids Health videos with Carly. At one point he excited said, “I seed that!” It was the lung sacs, which he’d seen in the anatomy app. He was then quoting the Nerve through the weekend.

Carly told me that when they were outside she had asked him what roots are for. He said, “I know you know what roots are for.” And then, “I know you know I know what roots are for.” They then did challenges with his kitchen stuff, finding things that looked most like organs. I switched to Hebrew colors, which led to us watching the Hebrew colors song. August saw Carly move computers away from where he was drinking his smoothie and he started quoting the Nerve: “You don’t have to be so fussy about it.”

I got ready for August and I to go for a walk. But first he got us playing with the doctor kits. He used the light to study my throat and ears. Actually played with those for quite awhile. He went and washed his hands, and noticed that you could really see the lines on his hands wen he was scrubbing them with the white soap.

He and I then got walking at 3. We first went up and did recycling, then got as far as our neighborhood park. There, he went on the spiderweb swing and took photos from it. He then lounged on it and ate some snack. He took a couple of photos with the macro lens and also pretended to fly. Then we went over to the ship structure and were playing a pirate ship game. Carly called, and he talked to her about the grocery shopping, relaying answers from me. After the call he said, “Let’s get back to our pirate ship game.”

At one point he told me “I’m the worst student” in the class. I asked him to explain and he said he breaks things without knowing. The only story he was able to tell was that he apparently knocked over n iPad on a stand and it came off the stand. Wasn’t even clear if anything had been broken. I also know his timer got broken. I explained it was just an accident and okay, and eventually we went back to the game.

I exchanged a couple messages with my friend Peter. August didn’t like this, and told me “I know you like to talk to your friend Peter, but please give me a little more attention.” We were playing the preschool game by now, and he had the students visiting his planet. He said his planet only had a hundred people and no plants or animals, and that “You’re very unlikely to die on this planet.” The game went on and on. The students visited him on multiple occasions, bouncing around once, doing science on another, etc.

We finally took a break from that and sat on a bench to have more snack. I got out Hilo 3 and we finished reading it. August was then acting out being a destructive robot, but a nice one: “I just destroyed every jail on the planet in two seconds. I don’t want jails on the planet.” And he destroyed everything on Earth but put it back. Same with all the fossils. He took some more photos and spent some time walking in circles around the base of a post. We started to head home and I convinced him to at least walk around the Holly block since we hadn’t gone very far.

We were home at 5:25. He gave her the hanger and was really proud of it. Carly used it to hang up his hat in the entryway. She was making soup but it wasn’t ready yet. He had some pasta, but didn’t eat much again.

He was taking lots of screenshots of lots of objects he found in Sky Walk, starting with the Messier 100 galaxy. When Cherie and Chuck called in FaceTime he showed them what he was doing. Later in the call he would show them, a couple times, the dancing that he does in dance class/studio.

I got his bath ready, then I went for a run. Carly took him upstairs and he spent a long time on the toilet, during which they played some of the classroom game. He then spent a lot of time cleaning the toilet. She gave him a bath, and they were rinsing when I got home.

I took him in the bedroom and he was playing around in there. He peed a little in his pajamas when I went down to get my iPad and insisted I change him. He went to the bathroom and I changed him. We then read a few chapters of Hilo 4, which I had bought. He was laughing a lot. He was hungry, so ate most of an apple and some Cheerios as we read.

After that I started to brush his teeth. He was thirsty so went into the bathroom and was using the top of the thermometer case as a little cup. He discovered that if he filled the bottom of the case with water and put the lid on that water wouldn’t flow out of the two holes on the bottom. He was very excited about this and showed us: “It’s scientific!” Of course, he got his shirt wet doing this, so we had to change his shirt. Then, he discovered we hadn’t wiped him after he went to the bathroom. This necessitated another pants change. We finally finished brushing his teeth and turned on just the lamp. We played one round of the preschool game, where he fell though the roof, then he wanted socks. I turned off the light and he complained “I can’t see my favorite piece of art.” That’s the mandala from Cherie. Did some singing, then we lay in silence. I was falling asleep as well, and he was asleep somewhere between 10:15 to 10:30.

Hammering the mushroom 1: