He slept until after 8:30. Carly was upstairs at the time. They came down a bit later. He told me, “if you want to say something you have to rawr.” He was a baby tiger. They went outside for a minute. Carly got them some of the leftovers from yesterday and they ate at the table.
Chocolate milk. “With more milk and more chocolate than last time, cuz that was kind of funky…Word of the day!” He then requested to watch a nature show. So we started episode 2 of Frozen Earth, and watched part of it about the penguins and seals. He then headed back upstairs to Carly. We are trying to figure out how to pay for our highway tolls and I worked on that.
They made a paper chain while I went and took a shower. They turned on Christmas music, and when I came down Mariah Carey was playing on the speaker. And August added it to his playlist. An unfortunate turn of events. I’m mostly against the whole jumping into Christmas the day after Thanksgiving thing, but I got the Christmas lights and helped hang those up. August was coming up with an idea for another decoration, and said “I’ve got this.” He made a picture and explained that it meant that for his birthday Carly and I needed to make him presents. He hung it from a straw on the wall to the right of the stairs and said it would stay there until his birthday. And he talked about having a pet and how he liked their little dog. At the party he had asked me if he could pet it. I hadn’t actually seen him do so, but asked him if he had and he said he had. Also, Carly wanted to watch a Christmas movie.
Carly and August headed to the mall to look for a raincoat for him. He spent quite awhile playing in the dirt on the way over. At the mall they found a possible coat, but it was heavier, and they bought a small pineapple at the farmer’s market at the mall. He sang the Gaston song while coming back from the mall “No one pees like Gaston…”
They got back at 1:40. He came in with a little fruit and said, “Try this! It isn’t poisonous and it’s like a lemony orange!…You can lick it. Or you can get the juice on your shirt and lick your shirt!” It was a small orange thing, like kumquat, but round, that he had found on a tree by the parking lot on the way to the cloud bridge.
He wanted to get more, so they went back to pick some more. They came back, and then August had the idea of making a Christmas walrus. I said it should be a Christmas sea cow. It was from a Sarah and Duck episode.
They then headed to school, using the car, to make popcorn and clean the popcorn machine. Before they left he was sitting on his stool and said, “Christmas month is the worst. Can’t use the railing.” We had hung the second string of lights on the stairs.
While they were gone I did dishes, organized the cupboard with all the plastic bags in it, then went up and was still folding laundry when they got back.
They Skyped with Vivian and Colin and family for a long time. I was upstairs getting to work on paperwork. He taped the ruler and markers to her and she was taking them off when I came down. They had just finished skyping and were watching a video on how to slice a pineapple.
Carly sliced it, and we talked about a Christmas movie he might like, and she might like watching with him. He told a story: “A long time ago there was an abandoned castle and in the castle there was a picture. The picture of the ruler. It was a horrible, terrible, no good not letting anyone in beast.” He went on to explain that someone came and killed the beast. It sounded a bit like Beauty and the Beast, but he said it was from a StoryBots video, which doesn’t seem likely. Carly made a pineapple smoothie. I went back upstairs to do more work (filed insurance claim, scanning, etc.). He let her read The 91-Story Treehouse, then he watched Max and Ruby.
Me upstairs doing paperwork.
I came back down. August asked, “Did you know that if you tell a story often enough it can become the truth?” I’m pretty sure that’s a line from something we’ve read recently—I think Dragons Beware! He and Carly had done a bunch of art. Earlier he had drawn three pictures: one of computer code, one of a kite, and one abstract. And he had had the idea to use chalk on the darker pages. I got some food, then was looking at their stack of art. A drop of water fell from my plate and landed on the edge of Carly’s paper. His art was fine, but in my haste to wipe it up I wiped my dry hand across his chalk drawing, and part of it was slightly smeared. He wasn’t happy about that, and blew raspberries at me. Carly suggested he do the lines darker, and he took it over to the blackboard and added to the lines, and seemed happy enough about it.
He then decided he wanted to send his computer code, kite, and abstract pictures to Mikaela. When it came to writing a note to her though he decided “I want it to be what Mikaela thinks they are.” He drank the rest of his smoothie, then we played the seal game again. Carly convinced him to let us take down the structure made of the tissue box, tape, and other things on the coffee table. He said okay, “But before you do that…” Had to take a photo of that, and a bit later the bucket with his concoction in it upstairs.
I took him upstairs and he tied the ball of green string to one of the pieces of the railings. He put his hand in the mixture in the buck and said it was “All gooey and tickly because animals were wriggling around init.” We dumped it out in the sink. Carly had let him put a whole bar of soap in it, and that was pretty interesting. He broke it up until we could wash it down the drain.
I then gave him a stool bath, washing his hair. He wasn’t very accommodating. We dried his hair out at the couch with the hairdryer, then put on his pajamas. He threw the ball of string downstairs, then we went downstairs to it. He started pulling on it and chanting, “Fire alarm, fire alarm, fire alarm!” He rolled it across to the kitchen and played with it some more, then I had the fun job of rolling it back up and trying not to get it knotted up. As I did that he realized he hadn’t had his vitamins, and also got the cracker box out of the cupboard. He saw a spot of red on his thumb and thought it was marker at first. But it was blood. He had gotten a small cut from something. He handled it really well though and didn’t get upset. I got a tissue and he pressed his thumb against it as he ate crackers. He then had the idea of me taping it around his thumb so he could eat more easily. He had those and his vitamins.
Carly came down, and commented on him being fashionable. He then talked about how he designed even more fashionable clothes. It ended with, “Four layers of cheetah fur to cover the metal!” He was taking a cue from one of the antagonists on Wild Kratts who tries to make jewelry, etc. from animals (like coral). He then ate strawberries I cut for him, then some Cheerios. He then found a bag of oatmeal in the cupboard and wanted to eat some dry. Carly got some for him, and he ate a bit.
I brushed his teeth and Carly went to sleep with him, a little after 10.
Sour orange:
Oranges made him sleepy:
Skyping with cousins:
If you tells story often enough, it becomes the truth:
His soap concoction 1:
His soap concoction 2:
Breaking up the soap:
Fire alarm:
His fixed piece of art
He requested I take a photo of this arrangement
His bandage