Saturday, October 20: the playground and a little sick

I had my book group meeting last night, to discuss Denton Little’s Death Date, so I slept in the small bedroom. He got up at 7:15 and saw the door closed so came to investigate. I told him mama was downstairs. He had some smoothie, and when I came down at 8 he was naked, playing with the magnets on the fridge and reciting the “slimy lochweed, ooh…” poem from The Loch-Mess Monster. Several lines of it. He made a rubber band instrument, stretching rubber bands between all the door knobs on the kitchen. He was coughing a lot this morning, getting mucus out of his throat. He spit it on the floor a couple times, and once I got out the flashlight to look for it. He liked that, and asked “When you’re sick and throwing up mucus can I find it?” He used the flashlight to look down my throat, then used the camera to take photos of my throat, ear, and eye.

He wanted to play his iPad but didn’t want to do it outside. I tried to make ‘quota’ the word of the day but he wasn’t interested. They had been outside for like ten minutes earlier and he argued that was enough. I said there was no quota of outside time. I took a shower.

He played with Tabletop, then switched to a dominoes video when I came down. Carly and I made him oatmeal with mango for breakfast.

He was then looking at one of the astronomy apps and zoomed in on the animation of the sun. He said, “See this? It’s called the’axis pixel’. It’s the center of the sun.” I know we’ve discussed pixels before, but not for quite while, and I’m not sure where he learned ‘axis’.

He had played with Waterlogue on my iPad yesterday, taking photos and making them look like paintings, and he wanted to do more of that. He pointed out that it’s better to take photos on my phone, so we installed it and Brushstroke and BeCasso (similar apps) on my phone and he had fun with that.

He went outside to take a few photos, then he had the idea of walking up to the playground to take more photos. We all got walking at 11. We did some meandering, pushing him on the bike, until he brought us to the park. There was a dog he didn’t like and he has a computer where he records who he likes every day before he goes to sleep. Carly read while sitting on the alligator bench and I set up on the play structure and read while he took some photos. He called us both over to the teeter totter things, then he found the rag that had been tied above the slide on the ground. Someone had managed to break it off. It ended up going home with us.

He was taking what I called “spy photos” of people and not happy when we wouldn’t let him do that. We took a break from photos and played the spiderweb store game instead. Carly headed home to do laundry and some cleaning. Before she left we showed her how I could pull him up the slide by reaching down and pulling him up by his arm.

We played awhile longer, but then he asked for food. It was noon. When I said we needed to go home for that he got upset with me. Calmed down, but a couple minutes later a little boy wanted to use the slide, and August was sitting at the top of it. When he had to move he said, “Everyone is stupid.”

I took him straight home and to the bedroom where I made him sit and talk to me. He knew I was upset, and wanted to make me happy, after apologizing, by surprising me with a surprise party. So he closed the blinds. The main bedroom doesn’t get very dark, so he insisted we got into the Zinnie bedroom to do it.

We did that, ten I went downstairs to make us tuna sandwiches. He looked at astronomy apps while I did that, then we ate, although he didn’t have much of his sandwich. He did more with Waterlogue and Brushstroke. He then went to the bathroom, and as he is wont to do he got thoughtful while on the toilet. He asked, “How come ‘no’ doesn’t always work?…You say ‘no’ and I still do something…” We discussed ‘free will’.

He was hungry, but had only eaten a quarter of his sandwich. I made a deal where he could eat a few slices of apple, then we would share the new kind of Balance Bar that had arrived in the iHerb box that we brought home yesterday. He did that, then we read three Skybrary books: Camille’s Team, Percy Gets Upset, and Freda Says Please.

I went upstairs and did some organizing, after Carly left me some stuff to sort. She had cleaned out the dresser drawers and some other stuff. August came up and helped unscrew one of the window latches so Carly could take one to Ace to try to get more.

She went to Ace. No luck on the latches or a carpet cleaner. August made me play Candyland. But then, after he won in a minute, gave me a challenge, giving me a few cards and telling me I had to decide what order to use them in to get to the end. Probably a challenge Carly has given him. He did some drawing with the markers, then was asking about the shortest measurement of time. So we were looking up picoseconds and those sorts of measurements. He liked ‘yoctoseconds’.

We read the beginning of Stuck in the Stone Age, the first book from Story Pirates. August had the tools out and asked for a few toothpicks to cut with the wire cutters. He then looked at Google Maps, then was playing Chesster when Carly got home. A bit later he asked, “What’s remarkable mean?” Think it was from Chesster. Became the word of the day.

Carly made soup and he wanted a squirrel nest. We did that and it got destroyed and rebuilt a few times. He wanted to sit under a blanket on the couch while we read Geronimo Stilton, using a flashlight. It got too warm for me, so he decided we could rebuild it as a fort and we read a few more chapters. He was hungry and waiting for the soup. Carly said, “It will be done in 9 minutes.” Him; “Uhh. I hate 9 minutes.” He played with his piano and then had some soup.

Carly got his bath ready and I went for a run. After I came back and took a shower he then whited me to take time lapse videos of him dancing and moving books around. He washed his hands and played in the sink and made a bit of the mess and we had to change his shirt.

We read some more Geronimo Stilton, then he went down and said good night to Carly. We played the preschool game where he is more still during rest time than the other kids because he’s a robot. For some reason I brought up Blanka from PKB last year and he didn’t remember her at first. But then he remembered he had a machine that turns him into Blanka, so he did remember her and that game that he played a lot. We looked at some photos of preschool last year.

Lights off totally. He told me, “Owls can make their pupils way bigger than humans.” I told a quick August and Teegan story where they go back to Ms. Robin to ask her about the empty world and she doesn’t have an answer. As he was going to sleep, he told me “Other worlds is real…” But I don’t remember what he explained after that as I was falling asleep as well. About ten minutes later he rolled over again and said, “You’re not very nice to me.” He explained that he doesn’t get to make the rules. I talked about the nice things we’d done today. He cuddled next to me and was finally asleep by 9:20.

Playing with the magnet board: